290 LAWS THAT CONCERN THE BEE-KEEPER 



yunctions 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 makf 

 by-laws, as its ordinances or enactments are commonly known, must b« 

 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 sliall be nuisances, and imder 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 afiirmative of the issue. 



