In the many years which have elapsed since this famous decision, the clouds have rolled away and the shape and basis of that apex of our jurisprudence been fairly surveyed. It will appear, I think, to any dispassionate jurist to have been rightly decided, at least as to the railroads, though the reasons given by Chief Justice Waite are unsatisfactory and have little logical basis. The true basis of regulation of rates at the common law and in English history was _monopoly_; either a franchise directly granted by the crown, such as a bridge, ferry, or dock, or one which was geographically, at least, exclusive, like a dock without a franchise. As Lord Ellenborough said in the decision quoted by the Chief Justice himself: "Every man may fix what price he pleases upon his own property, or the use of it; but if for a particular purpose the public have a right to resort to his premises and make use of them, and he have a monopoly in them for that purpose, if he will take the benefit of that monopoly, he must, as an equivalent, perform the duty attached to it on reasonable terms." "_If for a particular purpose the public have a right to resort to his premises_"--this important qualification from now on seems to have been lost sight of in the majority opinion. Quoting the early precedents such as that statute of William and Mary regulating the charges of common carriers--and our readers will remember many more--and the case of cabmen whose charges are regulated by city ordinances--but they are given stands or exclusive privileges in the streets--the chief justice concluded with the startling proposition that "if they do not wish to submit themselves to such interference, they should not have clothed the public with an interest in their concerns." But the public has an interest, as was afterward pointed out in dissenting opinions, in the price of shoes; yet it has never been supposed that that gave any power of legal regulation of factory prices. A still stronger case is that of inns or hotels, which have always been "a public avocation." They have had to take in all travellers without discrimination; yet there is not a vestige of legislation in the English statute-book regulating the prices to be charged by hotels. Indeed in early times most employments--millers, barbers, bakers--were public in the sense that the man could not refuse a job; yet their prices were never regulated. Yet it was upon this phrase, "_public employment_" or "_private property affected with a public interest_," taken from the opinion of Justice LeBlanc in the London Dock Company case, decided in 1810, without its context, that the chief justice built up the whole reason of his decision. The _decision_ in Munn _v._ Illinois, subject to court review as to whether the rate be confiscatory, remains good law, but the _opinion_ is still open to question; and indeed the most recent decisions of the Supreme Court show a desire to get away from it.