Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/113

 constitution simply because it bears equally upon all persons to whom it is applicable. A general law must be as broad as its object. Ex parte Westerfield, 55 Calf. 550. A statute which selects particular individuals from a general class and subjects them to particular rules, from which others in the same class are exempt, is a special law. State v. Hermann, 75 Mo. 340. Special legislation being prohibited by the constitution, courts will not sustain statutes of which the form alone is general but whose operation and effect are special. State v. Judges, 21 Ohio St. 11. By the exemption of building and loan associations from this act it gives them the right to make their contracts in any manner they choose, and seeks to take the like privilege from all other persons and classes. It is equivalent to a special statute, and hence unconstitutional. Gordon v. Winchester, 12 Bush. 110, 23 Am. Rep. 713. Subd. 13 of article 2 of § 69 declares that the legislature shall not pass special laws regulating the rate of interest on money, yet under this act building and loan associations, and they alone of all persons and corporations, are exempt from the provisions of the statute. They would be privileged to take any rate of interest they could procure and by any device they should resort to. This they cannot do, and the law will detect and prevent the taking of usury under whatever guise it may be cloaked. Philadelphia, etc., v. McKnight, 35 Pa. St. 470; Parker v. Fulton, 42 Ga. 251; Await v. Eutaw, 34 Md. 435; Bank v. Newman, 50 Md. 62; Patterson v. Albany, etc., 63 Ga. 373. By declaring § 11 of the act in question alone unconstitutional, and holding the balance of the act good, the court would assume the functions of a legislative body by enacting a law applying to all persons, building and loan associations alike with all other persons, but such was not the intent of the legislature. The vicious part of an act must be distinct and separable, and when stricken out enough must remain to be a complete act and sufficient to accomplish the object of the law as passed, in accord with the intent of the legislature. Meshmeier v. State, 11 Ind. 485; Burkholtz v. State, 16 Lea. 71; Bittle v. Stuart, 34 Ark. 224; Allen v. Louisiana, 103 U. S. 80; People v. Porter, 90 N. Y. 68. It may be laid down generally as a sound proposition