Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/566

 Ancient Reflected Through Modern. that this pool, like all efforts to control a market in vendibles, will break up sooner or later from the convulsion of inner forces. Therefore the courts will not put so suspi cious a case in the class of public callings; and by that decision list the business of mining of coal as public calling for all future cases everywhere, forever. This tract was an out cry in time of hardship; at such a time, more than at any other, desperate remedies are proposed. To open the mines by any legal processes whatever, as that business now stands, would be to override private rights as they are established in our system. Fortunately, under our constitutions, any

attempt to subject private property to public 519 operation must fail. Our theory of State in this regard must never be broken in upon. There are enterprises into which our govern ments may go; there are businesses which none of our governments may presume to conduct; between the public calling and the private calling there is this great gulf fixed. It is impossible for any one who would ap peal to the authorities to operate the mines in any industrial crisis to disclaim the result of his argument (p. 37). The consequence of a decision that all business is subject to public operation in any way that temporary expediency might dictate would be socialism.

ANCIENT REFLECTED THROUGH MODERN. By J. B. Mackenz1e. I ACROSS the line, a culprit misnamed Good Trusted a plea he filed would muster pass; That growths ought never to be understood As hay when such were cultivated grass. The Court much pained him by its curt address: "You cannot here win quittance for this wrong — The fine escape true judgment did assess — By pretexts which to fraudulence belong." 1 II When marching last through Gaul, Rome's powerful Goth Felt it incumbent on him to ordain (Breach of the mandate to unvial his wrath) That each from loose marauding should abstain. Came one who guilt denied in seizing hay, As being grass — in terms reserved alone; The sophism, alack, did little weigh, Since for the crime his life had to atone.3 1 Regina v. Good, 17 Ontario Reports, 725; where it was contended by the defendant, moving to quash a sum mary conviction, made under the authority of a statute, which prohibited the removal of hay from an Indian Reserve without a license, that natural grass only was meant. The Court, however, decided that the term included the artificial product. 2 "On their way, the army passed through the territory owned by the Monastery of St. Martin of Tours, the greatest saint of Gaul. Here the King commanded them religiously to abstain from all depredations, taking only grass for their horses and water from the streams. One of the soldiers, finding a quantity of hay in the possession of a peasant, took it from him, arguing that hay was grass, and so came within the permitted exception. lie was at once, however, cut down by the sword, the king exclaiming, ' What hope shall we have of victory if we offend the blessed Martin? "' — Hodgkin's Life of the Emperor Theodore.