of the statute. We can find nothing to support the plaintiffs contention in this regard. The argument advanced is based on a sound principle, but that principle has no application in view of the language of the act and the circumstances surrounding its passage. The principle invoked by the plaintiff in this connection is that every legislature must be presumed to have intended to enact a constitutional law, and therefore, if the language of a statute is susceptible of two interpretations, equally reasonable, one of which will save it from the death-blow of the constitution,’ such construction must be adopted. The principle would be of controlling weight in this case if it could be seen that there was any room for doubt as to the intent of the legislature—if it could be said with any degree of plausibility that that body intended to tax only local earnings on local traffic.’ But it is unjustifiable to adjudge that the law-making power has established a rule different from that which it clearly intended to establish, for the sole purpose of sustaming a law in part, which cannot be upheld in its full scope. Such an application of the principle invoked would lead to the substitution by the courts of a deformed, dismembered, and emasculated statute, which the sovereign power would have scorned to enact, in place of a symmetrical and harmonious law. Say the court in French v. Teschemaker, 24 Cal 554: “If any particular construction has the effect to declare the act, or any part of it, unconstitutional, such construction must be avoided when it can be fairly done, for the legal presumption is that the legislature could not have so intended. This, however, is to be taken with the qualification that, where the language used is unambiguous, and the meaning clear and obvious, an unconstitutional consequence cannot be avoided by forcing upon it a meaning, however plausible it may be, which is, upon a fair test, repugnant to its terms.” In Supervisors v. Brogden, 112 U. S. 261, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 125, the court ssid: “But if there were room for two constructions, both equally obvious and reasonable, the court must, in deference to the legislature of the state, assume that it did not overlook the provisions of the constitution, and designed the act of 1871 to take effect. Our duty, therefore, is to adopt that construction which, without doing violence to the
