Professor Parsons states the rule strongly:—
“It is his duty to receive all passengers who offer; to carry them the whole route; to demand no more than the usual and established compensation; to treat all his passengers alike; to behave to all with civility and propriety; to provide suitable carriages and means of transport; … and for the default of his servants or agents in any of the above particulars, or generally in any other points of duty, the carrier is directly responsible, as well as for any circumstance of aggravation which attended the wrong.”[195]
The same rule, in its application to railroads, has been presented by a learned writer with singular force:—
“The company is under a public duty, as a common carrier of passengers, to receive all who offer themselves as such and are ready to pay the usual fare, and is liable in damages to a party whom it refuses to carry without a reasonable excuse. It may decline to carry persons after its means of conveyance have been exhausted, and refuse such as persist in not complying with its reasonable regulations, or whose improper behaviour—as by their drunkenness, obscene language, or vulgar conduct—renders them an annoyance to other passengers. But it cannot make unreasonable discriminations between persons soliciting its means of conveyance, as by refusing them on account of personal dislike, their occupation, condition in life, COMPLEXION, RACE, nativity, political or ecclesiastical relations.”[196]
It has also been affirmed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, where, on account of color, a person had been excluded from a street car in Philadelphia.[197]
The pending bill simply reinforces this rule, which, without Congress, ought to be sufficient. But since it is set at nought by an odious discrimination, Congress must interfere.
PLACES OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENT.
Theatres and other places of Public Amusement, licensed by law, are kindred to inns or public conveyances, though less noticed by jurisprudence. But, like their prototypes, they undertake to provide for the public under sanction of law. They are public institutions, regulated, if not created, by law, enjoying privileges, and in consideration thereof assuming duties, kindred to those of the inn and the public conveyance. From essential reason, the rule should be the same with all. As the inn cannot close its doors, or the public conveyance refuse a seat, to any paying traveller, decent in condition, so must it be with the theatre and other places of public amusement. Here are institutions whose peculiar object is “the pursuit of happiness,” which has been placed among the Equal Rights of All. How utterly irrational the pretension to outrage a large portion of the community! The law can lend itself to no such intolerable absurdity; and this, I insist, shall be declared by Congress.