Court Opinion

ID: 9811655
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:26:56.152207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:58.508552
License: Public Domain

Clark, J.,
dissenting: The defendant claims to be exempt from working the public roads by virtue of section 25, chapter 147, Acts 1852. This is the charier of the Western Railroad Company, since altered by chapter 67, Acts 1879, to the “Cape Fear & Yadkin Valley Railway Company,” but retaining the same “ rights, powers, privileges, immunities and franchises.” Said section 25 provides, “That all the officers of the company and servants and persons in tlie actual employment of the company be and are hereby exempt from performing ordinary militia duty, working-on public roads and serving as jurors.”
If it bo conceded that the Legislature had the power to' grant this exemption still the right to the service of its citizens for the performance of military, road and jury duty is an essential element of sovereignty. It cannot be the subject of contract or inalienably bargained away. Railroad v. Alsbrook, 110 N. C., 137. Like similar exemptions of other classes of the community it is subject to revocation by any *873future Legislature, which can, according to its judgment, modify the exemptions, or repeal them, or change the ages at which any citizen shall become subject, or cease to be liable, to render such duties. Exemptions of particular classes of men, or in particular localities, are very common, and it would essentially cripple the powers of the sovereign if such exemptions were construed to be contracts and irrevocable. The fact that tl\e exemption in this case is found in a clause of a railroad charter makes it a contract no more than if found in the charter of a city or town or in the incorporation of a firemen’s or military company, in which they are not unusual. The exemption, is like the exemption of “ public miller's,” which is a revocable privilege extended to that necessary class of the community, but which is not a contract with mill owners that the legislative policy shall not be changed. In truth, such exemptions are mere privileges, revocable at the legislative will. That has been exercised as to this exemption by the general act (Acts 1879, ch. 82, sec. 4) which repeals all previous exemptions from road duty by providing that “ all able-bodied male persons between the ages of eighteen years and forty-five years shall be required, under the provisions of this act, to work on the public roads, except,” etc. Section 12 of this act provides, “ All laws and clauses of laws in conflict with this act are hereby repealed.” The act itself makes some exemptions, and others have since been made by the Legislature.
The grant of exemption from public duty to any class of citizens is a public matter, whether the grant is in a special or general act, or in a clause in a private or public statute. The Legislature has power to revoke the exemption, and this lias been done by repealing “ all laws and clauses of laws” (without excepting any) which conflict with the new statute, that all persons between the ages specified (with the oxcep*874tion named in the act) shall be liable to road duty. End-ljch on Stat., 231. It was not required that the Legislature should seek out and recite every statute, public or private, which contained an exemption. It is sufficient, as this act does, to make all able-bodied persons of the ages named liable to road duty and to repeal “ all laws and clauses of laws” in conflict with this requirement. Nor can itunakc any possible difference that this general repealing act passed in 1879 was brought forward in The Code adopted four years later.
Upon the special verdict the defendant should have been adjudged guilty. The case should be remanded to the end that the judgment be so entered, and that the Court may proceed to sentence according to law. ■