ty of the court yielded, as ordinary
political chambers always must yield, to extraordinary pressure. Mr.
Justice Bradley, however, was not an ordinary man. He was, on the
contrary, one of the ablest and strongest lawyers who sat on the federal
bench during the last half of the nineteenth century; and Bradley, like
Story before him, remonstrated against turning the bench of magistrates,
to which he belonged, from a tribunal which should propound general
rules applicable to all material facts, into a jury to find verdicts on
the reasonableness of the votes of representative assemblies. The
legislature of Minnesota, in 1887, passed a statute to regulate railway
rates, and provided that the findings of the commission which it erected
to fix those rates should be final. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul
Railway contended that this statute was unconstitutional, because it was
unreasonable, and the majority of the Court sustained their
contention.[28] Justices Bradley, Gray, and Lamar dissented, and Bradley
on this occasion delivered an opinion, from which I shall quote a
paragraph or two, since the argument appears to me conclusive, not only
from the point of view of law, but of political expediency and of common
sense:--

"I cannot agree to the decision of the court in this case. It
practically overrules Munn _v._ Illinois.... The governing principle of
those cases was that the regulation and settlement of the fares of
railroads and other public accommodations is a legislative prerogative,
and not a judicial one. This is a principle which I regard as of great
importance....

"But it is said that all charges should be reasonable, and that none but
reasonable charges can be exacted; and it is urged that what is a
reasonable charge is a judicial question. On the contrary, it is
preeminently a legislative one, involving considerations of policy as
well as of remuneration.... By the decision now made we declare, in
effect, that the judiciary, and not the legislature, is the final
arbiter in the regulation of fares and freights of railroads.... It is
an assumption of authority on the part of the judiciary which, ... it
has no right to make. The assertion of jurisdiction by this court makes
it the duty of every court of general jurisdiction, state or federal, to
entertain complaints [of this nature], for all courts are bound by the
Constitution of the United States, the same as we are."

There is little to add to these words. W