But it was insisted on behalf of the plaintiffs that the owner of property is entitled to a reasonable compensation for its use even when it is clothed with the public interest, and that the determination of what is reasonable is a _judicial, not a legislative_, matter. To this Chief Justice Waite replied that the usual practice had been otherwise. "In countries where the common law prevails," he said, "it has been customary from time immemorial for the legislature to declare what shall be a reasonable compensation under such circumstances, or perhaps more properly speaking to fix a maximum beyond which any charge made would be unreasonable.... The controlling fact is the power to regulate at all. If that exists, the right to establish the maximum of charge as one of the means of regulation is implied. In fact, the common law rule which requires the charge to be reasonable is itself a regulation as to price.... To limit the rate of charge for services rendered in a public employment, or for the use of property in which the public has an interest, is only changing a regulation which existed before. It establishes no new principle in the law, but only gives a new effect to an old one. We know that this is a power which may be abused; but that is no argument against its existence. _For protection against abuses by legislatures the people must resort to the polls, not to the courts._"[20] The principle involved in the Munn case also came up in the same year (1876) in Peik _v._ Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Company, in which Chief Justice Waite, speaking of an act of Wisconsin limiting passenger and freight charges on railroads in the state, said: "As to the claim that the courts must decide what is reasonable and not the legislature, this is not new to this case. It has been fully considered in Munn _v._ Illinois. Where property has been clothed with a public interest, the legislature may fix a limit to that which shall be in law reasonable for its use. This limit binds the courts as well as the people. If it has been improperly fixed, the legislature, not the courts, must be appealed to for the change." The total results of the several Granger cases, decided in 1876, may be summed up as follows: (1) That the regulatory power of the state over "public callings" is not limited to those businesses over which it was exercised at common law, but extends to any business in which, because of its necessary character and the possibilities for extortion afforded by monopolistic control, the public has an interest. (2) That such regulatory power will not be presumed to have been contracted away by any legislature, unless such intention is unequivocally expressed. (3) That the exercise of such regulatory power belongs to the legislature, and not to the judiciary. (4) And the _dictum_ that the judiciary can grant no relief from an unjust exercise of this regulatory power by the legislature.