Opinion of the Court.

forces a connection of its road with that of another company has a right, under the Constitution or at the common law, to require the company with which it connects to do a connecting business at the junction, if it does a similar business with any other company under any other circumstances. Such, we think, is not the law. It may be made so by the legislative department of the government, but it does not follow, as a necessary consequence, from the constitutional right of a mechanical union of tracks, or the constitutional prohibition against undue or unreasonable discrimination in facilities.

This necessarily disposes of the question of a continuous business, or a through line for passengers or freight, including through tickets, through bills of lading, through checking of baggage, and the like. Such a business does not necessarily follow from a connection of tracks. The connection may enable the companies to do such a business conveniently when it is established, but it does not of itself establish the business. The legislature cannot take away the right to a physical union of two roads, but whether a connecting business shall be done over them after the union is made depends on legislative regulation, or contract obligation. An interchange of cars, or the hauling by one company of the cars of the other, implies a stop at the junction to make the exchange or to take the cars. If there need be no stop, there need be no exchange or taking on of cars.

The only remaining questions are as to the obligation of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Company to carry for the Denver & New Orleans when passengers go to or freight is delivered at the regular stations, and the prices to be charged. As to the obligation to carry, there is no dispute, and we do. not understand it to be claimed that carriage has ever been refused when applied for at the proper place. The controversy, and the only controversy, is about the place and the price.

That the price must be reasonable is conceded, and it is no doubt true that in determining what is reasonable the prices charged for business coming from or going to other roads connecting at Pueblo may be taken into consideration. But the relation of the Denver & New Orleans Company to the

Opinion of the Court.

Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé is that of a Pueblo customer, and it does not necessarily follow that the price which the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé gets for transportation to and from Pueblo, on a division of through rates among the component companies of a through line to Denver, must settle the Pueblo local rates. It may be that the local rates to and from Pueblo are too high, and that they ought to be reduced, but that is an entirely different question from a division of through rates. There is no complaint of a discrimination against the Denver & New Orleans Company in respect to the regular Pueblo rates; neither is there anything except the through rates to show that the local rates are too high. The bill does not seek to reduce the local rates, but only to get this company put into the same position as the Denver & Rio Grande on a division of through rates. This cannot be done until it is shown that the relative situations of the two companies with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, both as to the kind of service and as to the conditions under which it is to be performed, are substantially the same, so that what is reasonable for one must necessarily be reasonable for the other. When a business connection shall be established between the Denver & New Orleans Company and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé at their junction, and a continuous line formed, different questions may arise; but so long as the situation of the parties continues as it is now, we cannot say that, as a matter of law, the prices charged by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé, for the transportation of persons and property coming from or going to the Denver & New Orleans, must necessarily be the same as are fixed for the continuous line over the Denver & Rio Grande.

Our attention has been called to several cases in the English courts where the question of reasonable or unreasonable preference by railway companies has been considered, but they all arose under the "Railway and Canal Traffic Act, 1854," 17 & 18 Vict. c. 31, and furnish but little aid in the determination of the present case. They are instructive and of high authority as to what would be undue or unreasonable preferences among competing customers, but none of them relate to the rights of connected railroads where there is no provision in law for their

Opinion of the Court.

operation as continuous lines for business.

And here it is

proper to remark that in the very act under which these cases

arose it is provided that "every railway company

working railways

line of railway

which form part of a continuous

communication

shall

afford all due and reasonable facilities for receiving and forwarding by one of such railways all the traffic arriving by the other, without any unreasonable delay, and without any preference or advantage, or prejudice

or disadvantage,
be offered to the public desirous of using such railways

and so that no obstruction may

as a continuous line of communication, and so that all reasonable accommodation may, by means of the railways of the several companies, be at all times afforded to the public in that behalf." If complaint was made of a violation of this provision, application could be made to the courts for relief. Were there such a statute in Colorado, this case would come before us in a different aspect. As it is, we know of no power in the judiciary to do what the Parliament of Great Britain has done, and what the proper legislative authority ought perhaps to do, for the relief of the parties to this controversy.

All the American cases to which our attention has been called by counsel relate either to what amounts to undue discrimination between the customers of a railroad company, or to the power of a court of chancery to interfere, if there is such a discrimination. None of them hold that, in the absence of statutory direction, or a specific contract, a company having the power to locate its own stopping places can be required by a court of equity to stop at another railroad junction and interchange business, or that it must under all circumstances give one connecting road the same facilities and the same rates that it does to another with which it has entered into special contract relations for a continuous through line and arranged facilities accordingly. The cases are all instructive in their analogies, but their facts are different from those we have now to consider. We have not referred specially to the tripartite agreement or its provisions, because, in our opinion, it has nothing to do

Statement of Facts.

with this case as it is now presented. The question here is whether the Denver & New Orleans Company would have the right to the relief it asks if there were no such contract, not whether the contract, if it exists, will be a bar to such a right. The real question in the case, as it now comes before us, is whether the relief required is legislative in its character or judicial. We think it is legislative, and that upon the existing facts a court of chancery can afford no remedy.

The decree of the Circuit Court is reversed, and the cause remanded with direction to

Dismiss the bill without prejudice.

DALLAS COUNTY v. MCKENZIE.

IN ERROR TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI.

Submitted January 16th, 1884.-Decided March 3d, 1884.

Evidence-Municipal Bonds.

Ralls County v. Douglas, 105 U. S. 728, relating to bonds in counties in Missouri issued in payment of subscriptions to railway stock, approved and followed. Marcy v. Township of Oswego, 92 U. S. 637, Humboldt Township v. Long, 92 U. S. 642, and Wilson v. Salamanca, 99 U. S. 499, relating to the validity of such bonds in the hands of a bona fide holder, approved and followed. When the records of a County Court show that orders for subscriptions to stock were made at adjourned and special terms at which all the judges were present, and that the last order was made at a regular term, it will be presumed, in the absence of anything to the contrary, that the adjourned and special terms were regularly called and held.

This was an action to recover the amounts due on interest coupons of municipal bonds issued in payment of a subscription for $85,000 to railway stock. The bonds contained the following recital:

"This bond is issued pursuant to an order of the County Court of the county of Dallas, made on the 18th of May, A. D. 1871, and amended on the 19th of June, A. D. 1871, and on the 12th of August, A. D. 1871."

Opinion of the Court.

There was no vote of the taxpayers of the county to authorize the subscription. The order of the County Court made on the 18th May, purported to be made at "an adjourned term." The record did not show how this became an adjourned term. It was assigned as error that "the Circuit Court erred in admitting in evidence the orders of the County Court of Dallas County over the objections of plaintiff in error.”

- Mr. John P. Ellis for plaintiff in error.

Mr. J. B. Henderson, Mr. Thomas C. Fletcher and Mr. Geo. D. Reynolds for defendant in error.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE delivered the opinion of the court. It is no longer an open question in this court that bonds issued by counties in Missouri, during the years 1870 and 1871, in payment of subscriptions to the stock of railroad companies without a vote of the people, are valid if the subscription was made under authority granted before the adoption of the Constitution of 1865 which did not require such a vote to be taken. In Ralls County v. Douglass, 105 U. S. 728, the cases in the Supreme Court of the State and in this court bearing on that question are referred to, and our conclusion distinctly stated. We there declined to follow the case of State v. Dallas County Court, 72 Mo. 329, decided in 1878, which substantially overruled a long line of cases in the Supreme Court of the State on which our earlier decisions were predicated.

In Marcy v. Township of Oswego, 92 U. S. 637, and Humboldt Township v. Long, Ib. 642, followed in Wilson v. Salamanca, 99 U. S. 499, it was expressly decided that municipal bonds were not invalid in the hands of a bona fide holder, by reason of their having been voted and issued in excess of the statutory limit, if the recitals imported a valid issue. It is an admitted fact in this case that McKenzie, the defendant in error, is a bona fide holder for value of the coupons sued on, and the recitals, which are almost in the exact language of those in Wilson v. Salamanca, supra, imply authority for the issue of the bonds from which they were cut. Consequently, in this case, the excessive issue is no defence.