extent that his determination is conclusive upon all questions arising under those statutes, even though the evidence which is adduced before him is wholly uncontradicted, and shows, beyond any room for dispute or doubt, that the case in any view, is beyond the statutes. and not covered or provided for by them?

That the conduct of the post office is a part of the administrative department of the government is entirely true, but that does not necessarily and always oust the courts of jurisdiction to grant relief to a party aggrieved by any action by the head, or one of the subordinate officials, of that department, which is unauthorized by the statute under which he assumes to act. The acts of all its officers must be justified by some law, and in case an official violates the law to the injury of an individual the courts generally have jurisdiction to grant relief.

The Land Department of the United States is administrative in its character, and it has been frequently held by this court that, in the administration of the public land system of the United States, questions of fact are for the consideration and judgment of the Land Department, and its judgment thereon is final. Burfenning v. Chicago, St. P., M. & O. R. Co., 163 U. S. 321, 16 Sup. Ct. 1018, 41 L. Ed. 175; Johnson v. Drew, 11 U. S. 93, 99, 18 Sup. Ct. 800, 43 L. Ed. 88, 91; Gardner v. Bonestell, 180 U. S. 362, 21 Sup. Ct. 399, 45 L. Ed. 571.

While the analogy between the above-cited cases and the one now before us is not perfect, yet, even in them it is held that the decisions of the officers of the department upon questions of law do not conclude the courts, and they have power to grant relief to an individual aggrieved by an erroneous decision of a legal question by department officers.

Thus in the Burfenning Case, 163 U. S. 321, 16 Sup. Ct. 1018, 41 L. Ed. 175, a tract of land had been reserved from homestead and pre-emption, and had been included within the limits of an incorporated town, notwithstanding which the Land Department had decided that the land was open to entry, and had granted a patent under the statute relating to homesteads. The court said that "when, by act of Congress, a tract of land has been reserved from homestead and pre-emption, or dedicated to any special purpose, proceedings in the Land Department in defiance of such reservation or dedication, although culminating in a patent, transfer no title, and may be challenged in an action at law. In other words, the action of the Land Department cannot override the expressed will of Congress, or convey away public lands in disregard or defiance thereof."

Here it is contended that the Postmaster General has, in a case not covered by the acts of Congress, excluded from the mails letters addressed to the complainants. His right to exclude letters, or to refuse to permit their delivery to persons addressed, must depend upon some law of Congress, and if no such law exists, then he

cannot exclude or refuse to deliver them. Conceding, arguendo, that when a question of fact arises, which, if found in one way, would show a violation of the statutes in question in some particular, the decision of the Postmaster General that such violation had occurred, based upon some evidence to that effect, would be conclusive and final, and not the subject of review by any court, yet to that assumption must be added the statement that, if the evidence before the Postmaster General, in any view of the facts, failed to show a violation of any federal law, the determination of that official that such violation existed would not be the determination of a question of fact, but a pure mistake of law on his part, because the facts, being conceded, whether they amounted to a violation of the statutes would be a legal question, and not a question of fact. Being a question of law simply, and the case stated in the bill being outside of the statutes, the result is that the Postmaster General has ordered the retention of letters directed to complainants in a case not authorized by those statutes. To authorize the interference of the Postmaster General, the facts stated must, in some aspect, be sufficient to permit him, under the statutes, to make the order.

The facts, which are here admitted of record, show that the case is not one which, by any construction of those facts, is covered or provided for by the statutes under which the Postmaster General has assumed to act, and his determination that those admitted facts do authorize his action is a clear mistake of law as applied to the admitted facts, and the courts, therefore, must have power in a proper proceeding to grant relief. Otherwise, the individual is left to the absolutely uncontrolled and arbitrary action of a public and administrative officer, whose action is unauthorized by any law, and is in violation of the rights of the individual. Where the action of such an officer is thus unauthorized, he thereby violates the property rights of the person whose letters are withheld.

In our view of these statutes the complainants had the legal right, under the general acts of Congress relating to the mails, to have their letters delivered at the post office as directed. They had violated no law which Congress had passed, and their letters contained checks, drafts, money orders, and money itself, all of which were their property as soon as they were deposited in the various post offices for transmission by mail. They allege, and it is not difficult to see that the allegation is true, that, if such action be persisted in, these complainants will be entirely cut off from all mail facilities, and their business will necessarily be greatly injured, if not wholly destroyed, such business being, so far as the laws of Congress are concerned, legitimate and lawful. In other words, irreparable injury will be done to these complainants by the mistaken act of the Postmaster General in directing the defendant to retain and refuse to deliver letters addressed to them.

The Postmaster General's order, being the result of a mistaken view of the law, could not operate as a defense to this action on the part of the defendant, though it might justify his obedience thereto until some action of the court. In such a case as the one before us there is no adequate remedy at law, the injunction to prohibit the further withholding of the mail from complainants being the only remedy at all adequate to the full relief to which the complainants are entitled. Although the Postmaster General had jurisdiction over the subject-matter (assuming the validity of the acts), and therefore it was his duty, upon complaint being made, to decide the question of law whether the case stated was within the statute, yet such decision, being a legal error, does not bind the courts.

Without deciding, therefore, or expressing any opinion upon the various constitutional objections set out in the bill of complainants, but simply holding that the admitted facts show no violation of the statutes cited above, but an erroneous order given by the Postmaster General to defendant, which the courts have the power to grant relief against, we are constrained to reverse the judgment of the Circuit Court, with instructions to overrule the defendant's demurrer to the amended bill, with leave to answer, and to grant a temporary injunction as applied for by complainants, and to take such further proceedings as may be proper, and not inconsistent with this opinion. In overruling the demurrer, we do not mean to preclude the defendant from showing on the trial, if he can, that the business of complainants, as in fact conducted, amounts to a violation of the statutes as herein construed.

Judgment reversed.

Mr. Justice WHITE and Mr. Justice MCKENNA, believing the judgment should be affirmed, dissented from the foregoing opinion.

BATES & GUILD CO. v. PAYNE, Postmaster General. (Supreme Court of United States, 1904. 194 U. S. 106, 24 Sup. Ct. 595, 48 L. Ed. 894.)

Appeal from the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia to review a decree which reversed a decree of the Supreme Court of the District, enjoining the Postmaster General from enforcing an order denying the admission to the mails of a publication of complainant as second-class mail matter, and dismissed the bill. Affirmed.

This was a bill to compel the recognition by the Postmaster General of the right of the plaintiff corporation to have a periodical publication, known as Masters in Music, received and transmitted through the mails as matter of the second class, and to enjoin defendant from enforcing an order, theretofore made by him, deny

ing it entry as such. This case took the same course as the preceding ones.

Mr. Justice BROWN delivered the opinion of the court.

The first number of Masters in Music was issued in January, 1903, and an application was immediately made to the Postmaster General for its admission to the mails as second-class mail matter. The application was denied, and plaintiff immediately, and before the issue of another number, filed this bill. The publication purports to be a "monthly magazine," salable at 20 cents per number, and to subscribers at $2 a year. The first number is devoted to the works of Mozart and contains a portrait, a biography of four pages, an essay of ten pages upon his art, and thirty-two pages of his music. The preliminary page contained a notice to the effect that "Masters in Music will be unlike any other musical magazine. Each monthly issue, complete in itself, will be devoted to one of the world's great musicians, giving thirty-two pages of engraved piano music, which will comprise those compositions or movements that represent the com-poser at his best, with editorial notes suggesting the proper interpretation; a beautiful frontispiece portrait, a life, and estimates of his genius and place in art, chosen from the writings of the most eminent musical critics. The text will thus constitute an interesting and authoritative monthly lesson in musical history; its selections of music will form a library of the world's musical masterpieces, and all at slight cost. * * * The announcement of the contents of the February issue, which will treat of Chopin, will be found on another page."

The Postmaster General placed his refusal to allow this magazine to be transmitted as second-class mail matter upon the ground that each number was complete in itself; had no connection with other numbers save in the circumstance that they all treated of masters in music, and that these issues were in fact sheet music disguised as a periodical, and should be classified as third-class mail matter.

Conceding the principle established in the two cases just decided to be that the fact that books published at stated intervals and in consecutive numbers do not thereby become periodicals, even though in other respects they conform to the requirements of Act March 3, 1879, c. 180, § 14, 20 Stat. 359 (U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 2647), cases may still arise where the classification of a certain publication may be one of doubt. Such is this case. But we think that, although the question is largely one of law, determined by a comparison of the exhibit with the statute, there is some discretion left in the Postmaster General with respect to the classification of such publications as mail matter, and that the exercise of such discretion ought not to be interfered with unless the court be clearly of opinion that it was wrong. The Postmaster General is charged with the duty of examining these publications and of determining to which

class of mail matter they properly belong; and we think his decision should not be made the subject of judicial investigation in every case where one of the parties thereto is dissatisfied. The consequence of a different rule would be that the court might be flooded by appeals of this kind to review the decision of the Postmaster General in every individual instance. In the case of American School of Magnetic Healing v. McAnnulty, 187 U. S. 94, 104, 23 Sup. Ct. 33, 47 L. Ed. 90, 94, the post-office authorities were held to have acted beyond their authority in rejecting all correspondence with the plaintiff upon the subject of the treatment of diseases by mental action; but while it was said in that case that the question involved was a legal one, it was intimated that something must be left to the discretion of the Postmaster General.

It has long been the settled practice of this court in land cases to treat the findings of the Land Department upon questions of fact as conclusive, although such proceedings involve to a certain extent, the exercise of judicial power. As was said in Burfenning v. Chicago, St. P., M. & O. R. Co., 163 U. S. 321, 323, 16 Sup. Ct. 1018, 1019, 41 L. Ed. 175, 176: "Whether, for instance, a certain tract is swamp land or not, saline land or not, mineral land or not, presents a question of fact not resting on record, dependent on oral testimony; and it cannot be doubted that the decision of the Land Department, one way or the other, in reference to these questions, is conclusive, and not open to relitigation in the courts, except in those cases of fraud, etc., which permit any determination to be re-examined" (citing cases). See also Johnson v. Drew, 171 U. S. 93, 18 Sup. Ct. 800, 43 L. Ed. 88; Gardner v. Bonestell, 180 U. S. 362, 21 Sup. Ct. 399, 45 L. Ed. 574.

But there is another class of cases in which the rule is somewhat differently, and perhaps more broadly, stated, and that is, that where Congress has committed to the head of a department certain duties requiring the exercise of judgment and discretion, his action thereon, whether it involve questions of law or fact, will not be reviewed by the courts unless he has exceeded his authority or this court should be of opinion that his action was clearly wrong. In the early case of Decatur v. Paulding, 14 Pet. 497, 10 L. Ed. 599, it was said that the official duties of the head of an executive department, whether imposed by act of Congress or resolution, are not mere ministerial duties; and, as was said by this court in the recent case of United States ex rel. Riverside Oil Co. v. Hitchcock, 190 U. S. 324, 23 Sup. Ct. 702, 47 L. Ed. 1076: "Whether he decided right or wrong is not the question. Having jurisdiction to decide at all, he had necessarily jurisdiction, and it was his duty to decide as he thought the law was, and the courts have no power whatever, under those circumstances, to review his determination by mandamus or injunction."