1664                                      Vetoes

amendments provide "that nothing in said Sections 258 and 259 shall
be construed to prohibit the use of purse nets to take or catch men-
haden in the Atlantic Ocean except within three miles of the beach
adjacent to the corporate limits of Ocean City, Maryland". The body
of Section 259(d), however, contains additional provisions which
state that nothing in that Section shall be construed to prohibit the
taking or catching of menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay by use of
buck net or purse net provided that said nets shall not exceed 150
yards in length nor have a mesh less than three inches. Further
provisions relate to the time that menhaden can be taken, the geo-
graphical application of the Sub-section in the Chesapeake Bay and
the licensing by the Tidewater Fisheries Commission of users of buck
or purse nets. In view of the difference between the description of
what the bill purports to do contained in its title and its actual pro-
visions contained in the body of the bill, a serious constitutional ques-
tion is here presented.

Article III, Section 29 of the Maryland Constitution provides, in
part, as follows:

"* * * every law enacted by the General Assembly shall em-
brace but one subject and that shall be described in its title;

The purpose of this constitutional provision was stated by the Court
of Appeals in Neuenschwander v. Wash, San. Com., 187 Md. 67 at
pp. 78-79:

"* * * As bills introduced in the Legislature are usually read
by their titles only, and the titles only are printed in the Journals
of the Senate and House of Delegates, the framers inserted this
provision in the Constitution to assist members of the Legisla-
ture in finding out the nature of the bills and watching their
course intelligently, and also to inform the citizens of the State
about the proposed legislation and to give them an opportunity
to appear before the committees of the Legislature. Stiefel v.
Maryland Institution for Instruction of Blind, 61 Md. 144, 148;
Painter v. Mattfeldt, 119 Md. 466, 473, 474, 87 A. 413; Weber v.
Probey, 125 Md. 544, 94 A. 162. * * *".

The cases in which the Court of Appeals has held a statute as in
violation of this constitutional provision have involved legislation
where there was a clear conflict between the title and the body of the
enactment and an apparent opportunity for misleading the members
of the General Assembly and the public. Bell v. Prince George's
County, 195 Md. 21, 29. For example, in human v. Hitchens Bros. Co.,
90 Md. 14, the title of the statute prohibited railroad and mining
corporations, their officers and agents from selling or bartering goods,
wares or merchandise in Allegany County to their employees. The
body of the act made it unlawful for any officer of such corporation
to own or have any interest whatever in any store or merchandise
business in the County without the slightest reference whether sales
were made to the employees or not. In holding the statute invalid,
the Court, speaking through Judge McSherry, said that although the
title need not contain an abstract of the bill nor give in detail the
provisions of the act, it must not be misleading by apparently limit-
ing the enactment to a much narrower scope than the body of the act
is made to encompass. Other cases to the same effect are collected in
Bell v. Prince George's County, supra, at pp. 28-32.