Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 1).pdf/273

 ducting banks of discount, deposit, and exchange is made an exclusive corporate franchise; and all other kinds of banks, whether conducted by individual firms or other corporations, are forbidden, under 'the penalties prescribed by § 27 of the act. The statute throws around the business of banking in North Dakota numerous restraints, checks, and regulations which do not exist at common law. Many, if not all, of the features of the statute were borrowed from the existing laws of the United States regulating the organization and government of national banks, and similar enactments have likewise been passed by the legislatures of many of the states.

While not assailing the whole act as unconstitutional, the relator contends that § 27, above quoted, so far as it concerns individuals or firms doing business without incorporation, contravenes both the federal and state constitutions. Counsel for relator cite § 1 of article 1 of the state constitution, and also § 1 of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States, and claim that the relator’s constitutional rights and personal liberty, as secured by these organic acts, have been ruthlessly violated and taken away by § 27 of the statute, for the reason that the section, among other things, prohibits individuals from carrying on the business of banking in a private capacity, and punishes all who violate the prohibition. This contention of the relator was urged with great learning and ability by the eminent counsel representing the prisoner, but we find no support in the authorities cited for the relator for the contention. It is true that it has been held that the provision relative to personal liberty found in our constitution might be violated by the enactment of a statute which operated to deprive a citizen of the right to pursue a lawful trade or avocation. In re Jacobs, 98 N. Y. 98; People v. Marx, 99 N. Y. 377, 2 N. E. Rep. 29. But, on the other hand, it is conceded that the business of banking, by reason of its very intimate relations to the fiscal affairs of the people, and the revenues of the state, is and has ever been considered a proper subject of legislative control, and strictly within the domain of the internal police power of every state. As a matter of fact, we have been unable to find an authority, and we have searched diligently, which has ever