Page:Earle, Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty, 1920, 171.jpg

Rh Act, therefore, is one of "the instances" of which the law "is full," and its "standard" is one of complete freedom, undisturbed by unlawful restraints or monopoly, and governed alone by the results of free competition and the resulting "market price." It is, therefore, as plain as the noonday sun that what is being asked is not at all that men be punished for violating a known defined "standard," of which they should have knowledge, but for adhering to it and continuing to obey the mandates again and again given to them by the Supreme Court itself.  It cannot be conceived that there could be clearer statement of this than that so repeatedly made by the Supreme Court itself. Indeed, the decisions are but constant repetitions of the principle, not that men can be punished for undefined crime, but that the centuries old maxim: "Id certum est quad certum reddi potest." So that what is really happening is that the effort is being made to establish as complete a  as can be well imagined.

Again, we have the "discovered" principle, so magnificantly stated in the Supreme Court's decision in the Monongahela case, where it was determined, (it already being established, that the time of taking is the time of fixing the value of property), that "just compensation" means, and can only mean "a full equivalent." And yet it has recently been argued that by confusing "value" with "price," matters can constitutionally be so manipulated as to deprive a man of his property by but giving him the means to replace but half of it, though the whole has been taken!

Again, there is the "discovered" principle underlying the Connolly case, but in an aspect not