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legislative, as well as of the executive and judicial departments must be tried, and to which every act done by either must conform.

The constitution is the fortification within which the people have entrenched themselves for the preservation of their rights and privileges, and every act of the legislature, or other department of government, which infringes upon any right declared in the constitution, whether it be inherent in the people or created by that instrument, is absolutely void.

Rector vs. State of Arkansas, 6 ''Ark. Rep., 187; Eason vs. State of Arkansas, 11 Ark. Rep., 481; Marbury vs. Madison, 1 Cranch; Kinnie's Law Comp., vol. 3,p.'' 314, and the numerous authorities there cited.

In the case of Houston vs. More, 5 Wheaton, the court said; "The law with us must conform in the first place to the constitution of the United States, and then to the subordinate constitution of this particular state, and if it infringes upon the provisions of either it is so far void."

By a course of judicial decisions reaching from the earliest history of American government to the present day, without a dissenting voice it has been adjudged that courts of justice have the right, and are in duty bound, to test every law by the constitution, as the fundamental and paramount law of the land, governing all derivative power and the exercise thereof. The judicial department with us is the proper power, under the constitution, to declare the constitutionality of a law, and every act of the legislature contrary to the true intent and meaning of the constitution, will be declared by the courts null and void, and of no effect whatever.

To contend that this is not so would be to assert, that the legislative branch of the government is supreme in its authority; that the creature is mightier than the creator; that the agent has greater power than his principal, who has commissioned him and out him out to transact business under a written authority: that one co-ordinate and concurrent branch or department of the