But we are told that the supreme court has decided the question, and declared that they are public highways, no matter whether they are owned by the state or private companies. We have not seen the decision; but if such decision has been made, we are bound to accept it as the law of the land, until the same court reverses it. Yet if the court was to decide that a river was a railroad, or that a steamboat was a train of cars, while we would accept this decision as the law, we would not admit that such was the fact. We are not aware that the question as to whether railroads are public highways has ever been before the supreme court, save in connection with the right of municipalities to subscribe stock and issue bonds therefor, and upon the question of voting taxes to aid in their construction. When these questions have been presented to the supreme court of the United States it has held that they were public highways. It is noticeable that these decisions have been made only when the interests of these corporations were to be subserved. In a recent case from Wisconsin the supreme court decided that they were public highways, and that it was just as lawful to levy taxes for railroads as _for any other public works_. The same court has decided in a large number of cases when suits were instituted on municipal bonds, that railroad corporations were private companies, and in all of the states where the question has arisen, we believe they have been held to be private corporations. We might cite several recent decisions of the supreme court to the same effect. In the cases of Kansas Pacific Railway Company _vs_. Prescott, Ribon _vs_. Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific Railway Company, Putnam _vs_. New Albany & Sandusky Railway Company, and Chicago & Quincy Railway Company _vs._ the County of Otoe, tried in Washington last winter, the court virtually decided the corporations were private, and not public. The doctrine to be gathered from these decisions is, that when the interests of these corporations demand it they are to be treated as private, but when the question is as to their right to compel the people to contribute of their substance to build railroads, then the roads are public highways. If the corporations are private, and their roads are built and owned by them, the fact that these roads are private still exists, notwithstanding the courts as to the law of the case decide that they are public highways. The fact that such a decision has been made, is strong proof of the correctness of our position, that the corporations have a controlling influence over the judiciary of the country more to be dreaded by the people than all the appliances that can be brought to bear upon the legislative and executive department of the government. But in no other instance has the influence of these corporations over the supreme court of the country been made more manifest than in what is known as the "legal tender" decision.