Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 1).pdf/219

 protected—it cannot be inferred that it was the will of the people to single out the first incumbent, and save him alone from removal. Finding, as we do, that the office of county assessor may be abolished at any time after the expiration of the term of the incumbent in office at the time of statehood, we cannot assent to the view that section 10 of the schedule has placed the office beyond the power of the legislature for the balance of the unexpired term when the constitution took effect. The case of State v. Tilford, 1 Nev. 240, is directly in point. The question there presented was as to the continuance in office of the members of the board of education for Storey county, whose term of office had not expired when the state of Nevada came into the Union. The legislature had abolished the office by conferring all the powers of that board upon other officers. But it was urged, as in the case before this court, that the office was, for the unexpired term, placed by the constitution beyond the reach of the legislature, the constitution providing as follows: ‘All county officers under the laws of the territory of Nevada, at the time when the constitution shall take effect, * * * “shall continue in office until the first Monday of January, A. D. 1867, and until their successors are elected and qualified.” Const. Nev. art. 17,§ 13. The court said: “It may be contended that, as the constitution retains all county officers in office until 867, it amounts to a prohibition on the legislature from abolishing any county office which was in existence when the constitution was adopted, before January, 1867. A sufficient answer to that proposition is that the constitution provides in section 25 of article 4 that ‘the legislature shall establish a system of county and township government, which shall be uniform throughout the state.’”

Reasoning upon the same line, we say that the constitution has, in express terms, vested in the legislature the power and made it their duty to provide by law for such other county officers than those named in section 173 (and county assessors are not therein named) as may be deemed necessary; and section 10 is to be read with the qualification that the officer shall hold the office subject to the power of the legislature to abolish the office. It was the thirteenth section of the seventeenth