The people will be compelled to build the roads for private corporations, and, after they are built, pay toll or fare for the privilege of using them. The people pay for the roads, yet they do not own them, and have no interest in them, or right to use them except upon payment of such sums as the private corporations owning them may choose to demand. We insist that no such power is vested in the legislatures or in congress. If the power does exist--if the people can be compelled to build railroads for private corporations--in the language of a distinguished judge of the state of New York, "It is legal robbery, less respectable than highway robbery, in this: that the perpetrator of the latter assumes the danger and infamy of the act, while this act has the shield of legislative responsibility." The effect of this decision is to make railroad companies a component part of the government, to draw more clearly the line between the people and the combination of monopolies that now control the country. When the court of last resort in the nation comes boldly to the front, and by an edict (for it cannot be treated as a judicial decision) declares that unless there is an "absence of all possible public interest, so clear and palpable as to be perceptible by every mind at first blush," the power to levy and collect taxes in aid of railroads owned and controlled by private corporations exists, the people have reason to fear that the interests of railroads and not the constitution of the country is the paramount law. But says the court, "That railways, though constructed by private corporations and owned by them, are public highways, has been the doctrine of nearly all the courts ever since such conveniences for passage and transportation have had an existence. Very early the question arose whether a state's right of eminent domain could be exercised by a private corporation created for the purpose of constructing a railway. Clearly it could not, unless taking land for such a purpose was taking land for public use. The right of eminent domain nowhere justifies the taking of property for private use. Yet, it is a doctrine universally accepted that a state legislature may authorize a private corporation to take land for the construction of such road, making compensation to the owner. What else does the doctrine mean if not that building a railway, though it be built by a private corporation, is an act done for a public use. And the reason why the use has always been held a public one is that such a road is a public highway, whether made by the government itself or by the agency of corporate bodies, or even by individuals, when they obtain their power to construct it from legislative grant." If the court had been employed as the attorneys of the parties seeking to collect the tax, no more ingenious or partisan argument could have been made for the claimants than is presented in this opinion. As a finishing