290 LAWS THAT CONCERN THE BEE-KEEPER 
runctions as such, their powers are limited to those expressly named in the 
grant. This grant of power is usually contained in the general laws of 
the State governing cities, towns, and villages, and is called the charter 
power, the law or statute itself being usually known as the charter. Keep- 
ing these facts in mind will aid the unprofessional man in understanding 
the terms to be encountered in an examination of local laws in regard 
to the power of a municipal corporation to legislate upon this subject. 
Every State has its own peculiar policy toward these municipal cor- 
porations, and no two are exactly the same. They all, however, follow the 
same general plan, with variations influenced by local conditions. As the 
power of the State legislature is so limited that its acts must be consistent 
with the constitution, so the power of a municipal corporation to make 
by-laws, as its ordinances or enactments are commonly known, must be 
in harmony with its charter, with this further distinction, that while the 
legislature of the State may exercise unlimited discretion in all matters 
not prohibited by the constitution, a municipal corporation is restricted 
in legislative action to those matters in which it is expressly authorzed 
by its charter. 
It is the general rule that cities, towns, and villages have conferred 
upon their common councils power to declare, abate, and remove nuisances. 
In the case of nuisances per se, whether at common law or by statute, or 
by ordinance in those cases in which the council may declare such nuis- 
ances, the power to abate by summary action is either expressly given or 
exists by necessary implication. Summary abatement means arbitrary 
removal or destruction without judicial process. Nearly, if not quite, all 
city charters contain grants of power to license, regulate, and restrict all 
businesses, pursuits, and avocations, and also a section known commonly 
as a “ general welfare clause,” by which the corporate body is empowered 
generally to enact such ordinances, rules, and regulations as may be neces- 
sary to preserve the peace, safety, and health of its inhabitants and 
promote their general welfare. To undertake to set out the specific pro- 
visions of the charters of the municipal corporations of the various States 
would extend this article far beyond its intended scope. 
it is a cardinal rule of the courts that all ordinances must be reason- 
able, and that while a city may define, classify, and enact what things or 
classes of things shall be nuisances, and under what conditions and circum- 
stances such things shall be deemed nuisances, this power is subject to 
the limitation that it is for the courts to determine whether, in a given 
case, the thing so defined and denounced is a nuisance in fact, and that 
if the court shall resolve this point in the negative the ordinance is invalid. 
Under this rule, in an Arkansas case, it was held that the municipal 
corporation could not prohibit the keeping and rearing of bees within its 
limits as a nuisance regardless of whether they were so in fact or not. 
And this case seems to have been received as announcing the correct rule in 
recent text works, though the point has not been raised elsewhere in contro- 
versy. 
Under the rule just stated, the power of summary abatement would 
not exist, even though the presence of bees in a particular part of the 
city should be declared objectionable, but the point would rest, as has 
been heretofore observed, upon the proof adduced, the burden being upon the 
party declaring the affirmative of the issue. 
