from and determined by the local police power of each separate community, although sometimes granted by proclamation from the State Executive, since Mr. Hudson has not assailed it, I will not defend. In the granting of railway passes I confess my inability to discover a crime against the State. Wherein they differ from the orders that a manager issues to seats in a theatre—especially since his theatrical privileges come from the people by special license—I am unable to perceive. "Passes" are the small currency of the railway company, payable for favors not estimated in, or convertible to, money; and are used just as the small trader bestows an apple or a toy upon the juvenile carrier between his small customer and himself. The company's rule is to issue passes only for services; but the rule is construed liberally to apply to prospective as well as actual services, and to count presumed influence, or perhaps an assumed or expected favorable mention of the particular corporation issuing them as a service. But, even if issued for no service, real or prospective, I know of no human being, institution, or concern, public or private, that is not allowed to perform acts complimentary in their nature, or even entirely gratuitous. In the course of many years' experience I have seen fully as many acts of public charity as of private compliment performed by railway companies. A friendless and penniless woman, whose husband has been left behind or has deserted her, en route she knows not whither, can be transported to a desired destination, if not in the discretion of the conductor, at least by telegraphing for permission to the proper department. And there is not a railway in the country where such gratuitous services are not constant, and as unchronicled and unheralded as they are constant. While I frankly say that, for one, I can not see where the granting either of charities or of "passes" militates against the public character imposed by Legislatures upon railroads, or is forbidden by the fact that to facilitate its construction the railway company once enjoyed a parcel of the State's power of eminent domain; I must admit that (except as to employés) the system has always been a nuisance to the railway companies which they have constantly labored to abolish. It is impossible to forecast what quantum of credit Mr. Hudson and his kind may take unto themselves for the Interstate Commerce Act, which has at last promised the railways a grateful relief from the pass-beggar. But if that act shall abolish both pools and passes, public sympathy will be with the honest shipper who must pay increased tariffs, rather than with the local Solon who wakes to find that—while screaming at "discriminations" and "long and short hauls"—he has actually been emptying his own pockets of the passes with which they were lined.
The power of the Government over the citizen, then, except in this solitary instance of land condemnation, being never exercised by a corporation: being bestowed invariably and always for the benefit and in the interest of the people, and not of the railway company; taking
