In re Boston Mining & Milling Co.

In the matter of the Boston Mining and Milling Company.

In the early English cases the courts held the title to be no part of the statute, and it was said that the title could never be referred to as affording any clue to the legislative intent. (Dwarris, 500, 1.) The rule has been somewhat modified, and now, when the meaning of the body of an act is doubtful, the title may be relied on as an assistance in arriving at a conclusion. Where the meaning of the language employed in the body of the act is doubtful, the title, taken in connection with other parts of the statute, may be resorted to for the purpose of removing ambiguity. (Sedgwick, 50, 51, and cases there cited.) But the title can never control the plain intent, as the same is expressed in the act itself:

In some of the States of the Union, where the constitution *626 contains a provision in effect like our own—that every statute, or every statute of a certain class, shall embrace a single subject, which shall be expressed in its title—the courts have held that such provision ivas mandatory, and that the statute was void where the title did not comply with the constitutional command. In those states it necessarily…