We are not prepared to say that cases might not arise, and we have indicated them, in which we should not hesitate to declare a law unconstitutional. To hold otherwise would be an encouragement to inferior courts to assume to pass upon the fact as to whether a law contained more than one subject, and whether that one subject was clearly expressed in the title; endless litigation, without any practical benefits, would be the result of such a course.
Is this act of 1868, under consideration, a "revenue bill?" Webster defines revenue to mean "the annual produce of taxes, excise; customs, duties, rents, &c., which a nation or State collects and receives into the treasury for public use."
The law under consideration authorized the levy af a tax to build bridges and roads. The title of the act was "An act opening and regulating roads and highways." Can a bridge become a necessary part of a highway? If it can, then this is not a revenue law, it is a well settled principle of the law that whenever the Constitution grants a power, that it also grants the means by which it can be carried into effect. To construct roads and highways, money, in the opinion of the Legislature, was necessary. The complainant entertains a contrary opinion, and says, stop! this law, authorizing the opening of roads and highways, became unconstitutional the very moment that it provided for a tax to carry the law into full effect, because money constitutes revenue.
Labor produces money; the timber, stone and gravel used in the construction of the road may be converted into money. It requires money to procure the labor, timber, stone and gravel that may be used in the construction of the roads. If one should contract with another for the building of a public road or highway from here to Hot Springs, over which the public could travel by the ordinary means of conveyance, we should expect the ravines and streams between here and that point to be placed in such condition, by bridging or otherwise, as would render the crossing as free from all danger as any other portion of the road.
