59 So. 473 | Ala. | 1912
Law Lamar- was taken into custody on a warrant issued by a magistrate upon an affidavit, dated September 27, 1911, charging that said Lamar “did sell cotton seed meal containing 7% per cent, of ammonia, for fertilizing purposes, without having attached to the package containing the same the tax tag (Alabama tax tag) prepared by the Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries.” On a proceeding by habeas corpus, the question being whether the affidavit charged any offense, the judge of the city court or
The Code of 1907 was first adopted by the act approved July 27, 1907 (Gen. Laws 1907, p. 499), and went into effect May 1, 1908. In the chapter given to Agriculture and Industries, provision is made for the analysis, registration, branding, tagging, and sale of fertilizers and fertilizer materials. The tags which are required to be used in such case are issued by the Commissioner, and their price is fixed by law. They are appropriately called “tax tags.” By article 3 of the chapter, the sale of cotton seed meal “offered for sale as a fertilizer” is also regulated, and the observance of the regulations there made is enforced by a criminal statute. — Code, § 6887. But the tags to be used in case of a sale of cotton seed meal in bags or packages are not furnished by the state. They imply only the seller’s personal guaranty as to the ammonia content of the meal. They are not tax tags. By section 6881 it is declared that the sale, exchange, or offer for sale or exchange, of any fertilizer, which has not been tagged as provided by law, shall constitute a criminal offense, punishable by penalty, which may be widely variant from that denounced against violations of the law made for the regulation of the traffic in cotton seed meal as a fertilizer. And section 45, to be found in article 2 of the chapter wherein the sale of fertilizers is regulated, provides that “the term 'fertilizer material’ used in this article shall not include common lime, land plaster, cotton seed meal, ashes, or common salt, not in combination.” We take it to be a necessary consequence of this section that cotton seed meal is not a fertilizer, within the meaning of the article. This recital of the provisions of the Code makes it plain that,
On August 14, 1907, was approved an act making various amendments in the law concerning the manufacture and sale of fertilizers and fertilizer materials in this state. — Gen. Acts 1907, p. 744. By section 15 of that act, section 392 of the Code of 1896 was amended in two respects: In the forepart of the section, the words “fertilizer materials” were substituted for “fertilizer or commercial fertilizer”; a provision was added which dealt with fillers or foreign and makeweight materials. As thus amended, the section passed into the printed Code of 1907 as section 45, this because the act adopting the Code directed that all acts of the then session of the Legislature of general nature, enacted on or after July 9, 1907, should be incorporated into the Code to be thereafter printed and proclaimed. But these acts acquired no sanction by their presence in the Code. — Montgomery v. Wyche, 169 Ala. 181, 53 South. 786. However, the Code, after it had been printed, was adopted in its printed form by an act of August 26, 1909. By section 10 of the Code as adopted on the date last mentioned, with some specific exceptions not affecting the case at hand, all statutes of a public, general, and- permanent nature, not included in the printed Code, were repealed. But it was not intended, of course, to repeal the many general laws of great importance to the state which had been enacted subse
With considerable elaboration, this act of November 22, 1907, goes over and amends the laAv Avhich had theretofore been stated in sections 49 and 50 of the Code (constituting article 3 of the chapter given to Agriculture and Industries), Avhere the analysis, tagging, and sale of cotton seed meal were regulated. The provision for the seller’s tags is renewed; but there is no requirement of tax tags, no requirement that *he state shall furnish or fix the price of tags, nor any indication of a change from the policy which the state had previously declared and observed of providing a character of regulations for fertilizers, which could be nothing but fertilizers, different from those provided for
Section 5 seems out of place in the act. The act had prepared a system of regulations which applied, not only to cotton' seed meal in general, but to. cotton seed meal offered for sale as a fertilizer. It had enjoined the use of means by which the purchaser, for whatever
The construction for which the state contends must be avoided, in our opinion, for the additional reason that it would result in the constitutional invalidity of the enactment. Section 45 of the Constitution of 1901 provides that “no law shall be revived, amended or the provisions thereof extended or conferred, by reference to its title only; but so much thereof as is revived, amended, extended, or conferred, shall be re-enacted and published at length.” In State v. Rogers, 107 Ala. 115, 19 South. 909, 32 L. R. A. 520, the court, speaking to this inhibition, quoted from a New York-case, as fol
In our recent case of Imperial Cotton Seed Oil Co. v. Shanks, 177 Ala. 522, 58 South. 390, we held on considerations there stated, that neither section 28, which provides specifically for the tax tag, nor section 6881 of the Code, the section under which this affidavit was framed, require cotton seed meal, sold for fertilizing purposes to be tax-tagged; and that sales of such merchandise are not rendered void by failure to comply with those provisions of the statute.
Our conclusion is that the affidavit charged no offense, and that the plaintiff in error shonld be discharged. It will be so ordered.
Reversed and rendered.