what is due process of law, regard must be had to substance not to form. * * * 'Can a State make anything due process of law which, by its own legislation, it chooses to declare such? To affirm this is to hold that the prohibition to the States is of no avail, or has no application where the invasion of private rights is effected under the forms of State legislation.'"[1]
It cannot be believed that the Courts will ever permit that those, upon whose success and prosperity the revenues and welfare of the nation must depend, should be subjected to treatment that no court of justice would for a moment, permit to be inflicted upon itself under like circumstances,—the vital principle, of course, governing all such cases is that the State cannot force the duty of judgment upon those whose minds it shackles with the fears of danger and with threats of harm. It is no answer in such cases to say that the matter so constantly varies that the State cannot give a fixed rule, for if this be the case, as it is, that simply proves that the attempt is unlawful and oppressive. "Lex non cogit ad impossibilia."[2]
This subject well illustrates the point that many business men may rightly feel they are being unjustly treated under the threatening provisions of the Act, and yet have difficulty in formulating exactly of what the injustice consists. The crux of the matter lies largely in that very principle upon which the writer has sought to lay the greatest emphasis, and it is that the law should not require of a man the performance of a duty which by reason of the uncertainties of its conditions, the infallibility of human understanding, and
