Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 48).pdf/487

tend ? If it is applicable to the code of revenue and taxation to the extent that a bill introduced for the purpose of modifying one provision of such code may be later changed to modify any other provision of the same code without change of purpose, it would seem equally applicable to any code. This holding must be further examined in the light of its consequences. If it is followed in the future by two members of this court, it means that § 58 of the constitution is practically nullified in so far as future legislation may pertain to our existing statutory law. In 1895, the legislature approved the work of a code commission by passing as bills seven codes prepared by it, each code being embraced in a separate bill under an appropriate title. No session of the legislature has been held since the passage of these codes (which became the Revised Codes of 1895) in which bills were not introduced to amend one or more sections of them. If the rule stated in the opinion under consideration be sound any act to amend any section of any one of these codes could readily have been converted at any time during passage into an act to amend any other section of the same code without changing its purpose. And it would make no difference how far remote the subject matter of the two proposals might be, so long as that subject matter was appropriately contained in the particular code. Thus, a bill to amend a section vesting certain appointive power in the governor might be changed to one regulating the boundaries of school districts without changing its purpose; because, forsooth, both matters have, during the history of legislation, been deemed to be properly included in one bill when a former legislature undertook the ambitious project of revising the codes. Surely, the test as to whether or not the purpose of legislation is changed during passage is not whether the original bill and the bill as passed might both be connected with some broad subject that would make it possible or even appropriate to deal with both subjects under one title in some conceivable major scheme of legislation! We confidently assert that such a test is without authority in constitutional commentaries or precedents. It practically deprives § 58 of all the meaning it ever had. It takes from the people the protection that an observance of its requirements would give. It makes possible all the mischief that this provision of the constitution was designed to prevent, as under this holding most any innocent title—innocent because it serves notice of a very limited subject matter of proposed legislation—is converted into a veritable dragnet for drawing into the legislative whirlpool a vast quantity of