34 fOREST commissioner's report. 



ject to such reasonable limitations in their enjoyment as shall 

 prevent them from being injurious, and to such reasonable 

 restraints and regulations established by law as the legislature, 

 under the governing and controlling power vested in them by 

 the constitution, may think necessary and expedient. This is 

 very different from right of eminent domain," etc. 



In the case Wadleigh versus Gilman 12 Alaine, 403, decided 

 in 1835, only 15 years after the adoption of our constitution, 

 there was upon the plaintiff's land a wooden building. x\ city 

 ordinance was passed by legislative authority prohibiting the 

 erection of wooden buildings within certain limits, which 

 included the plaintiff's building. After the passage of the 

 ordinance the plaintiff moved his building to another place 

 within the same inhabited limits. The defendant, as city mar- 

 shal, acting under the ordinance, entered upon the plaintiff's 

 land, took the building down. The court held the ordinance 

 valid and the defendant protected, and declared as follows : P. 

 405 : "Police regulations may forbid such a use and such modi- 

 fications of private property as would prove injurious to the 

 citizens generally. This is one of the benefits which men derive 

 from associating in communities. It may sometimes occasion 

 inconvenience to an individual, but he has compensation in par- 

 ticipating in the general advantage. Laws of this character are 

 unquestionably within the scope of the legislative power without 

 impairing any constitutional provision. It does not appropriate 

 private property to public uses, but merely regulates its enjoy- 

 ment." 



* 



In Cushman versus Smith, 34 Maine 247, decided 15 years 

 later, in an elaborate opinion by Chief Justice Shepley, the court 

 said of the constitutional provision in question (page 258) "The 

 design appears to have been simply to declare that private prop- 

 erty shall not be changed to public property, nor transferred 

 from the owners to others for public use without just compen- 

 sation." In Jordan versus Woodward, 40 ^Maine 317, it was 

 said by the court at page 324: "Strictly speaking, private prop- 

 erty can only be said to have been taken for public uses when 

 it has been so appropriated that the public have certain and well 

 defined rights to that use secured, as the right to use the public 

 highway, the turn]»ike, the ferry, the railroad and the like." 



