APPENDIX. 57 



which, like that of taxation, pervades every department of business 

 and reaches to every interest and every subject of profit or enjoyment. 

 We refer to what is known as the police power. 



"The police of a state, in a comprehensive sense, embraces its 

 whole system of internal regulation, by which the State seeks not 

 only to preserve the public order and to prevent offences against the 

 State, but also establish for the intercourse of citizens with citizens 

 those rules of good manners and good neighborhood which are calcu- 

 lated to prevent a conflict of rights, and to insure to each the unin- 

 terrupted enjoyment of his own so far as is reasonably consistent 

 with a like enjoyment of rights by others." . . . 



" No definition of the powers can be more complete and satisfactory 

 than some which have been given by eminent jurists in deciding 

 cases which have arisen from its exercise, and which have been so often 

 approved and adopted, that to present them in any other than the 

 language of the decisions would be unwise, if not inexcusable. Says 

 Chief Justice Shaw, 'We think it is a settled principle, growing out 

 of the nature of well-ordered civil society, that every holder of prop- 

 erty, however absolute and unqualified may be his title, holds it 

 under the implied liability that his use of it shall not be injurious to 

 the equal enjoyment of others having an equal right to the enjoyment 

 of their property, nor injurious to the rights of the community. All 

 property in this Commonwealth is . . . held subject to those 

 general regulations which are necessary to the common good and 

 general welfare. Rights of property, like all other social and con- 

 ventional rights, are subject 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 the right of eminent domain, — the right 

 of a government to take and appropriate private property whenever 

 the public exigency requires it, which can be done only on condition 

 of providing a reasonable compensation therefor. The power we 



