Commissioner of Agriculture. 85 



turers, should they obtain sufficient power to influence or con- 

 trol the legislative councils, prohibit the manufacture or sale 

 of dairy products? Would arguments then be found wanting to 

 demonstrate the invalidity under the Constitution of such an 

 act? The principle is the same in both cases. The numbers en- 

 gaged upon each side of the controversy cannot influence the 

 question here. Equal rights to all are what are intended to 

 be secured by the establishment of constitutional limits to legis- 

 lative power, and impartial tribunals to enforce them. 



Illustrations might be indefinitely multiplied of the evils which 

 would result from legislation which should exclude one class of 

 citizens from industries, lawful in other respects, in order to 

 protect another class against competition. We cannot doubt 

 that such legislation is violative of the letter, as well as of the 

 spirit of the constitutional provisions before referred to, nor 

 that such is the character of the enactment under which the 

 appellant was convicted." 



So in the case at bar, as the statute does not by its language 

 purport to prohibit merely unwholesome preservatives, but pre- 

 servatives of every character, however beneficial or wholesome, 

 it is clearly violative of the provisions of the Constitution. The 

 Legislature has no right to prohibit this defendant from exercis- 

 ing the lawful calling of manufacturing or selling preservatives, 

 a business in which thousands have been engaged for years past. 

 It has no right to prohibit the manufacture or use of ice to pre- 

 serve dairy products, nor the sale of vichy and milk, " Matzoon. ,? 

 " Kumyss," " Sparklets " or even a milk punch. 



All of the above cases have recently been followed, and the 

 policy of the law once more strongly asserted in the recent case 

 of People ew rel. Tyroler v. Warden, 157 N. Y., 116, where the 

 court held, through Chief Justice Parker, that the Legislature 

 has no right to prohibit parties from engaging in the business of 

 ticket scalping in which they had hitherto been lawfully engaged. 

 The chief justice states (p. 132): 



" If the law were otherwise no trade, business or profession 

 could escape destruction at the hands of the Legislature if a 



