PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOLL WEEVIL CONVENTION. 39 



fort and convenience of the community which do not encroach on the 

 like power vested in Congress by the Federal Constitution." Con- 

 tinuing, the Court said, speaking of what the police power of a State 

 is: "It is a power in the exercise of which a man's property may 

 be taken from him, where his liberty may be shackled and his person 

 exposed to destruction in cases of great public emergencies." 



In the case of Egan vs. Hart, 45 An., 1,358, the doctrine announced 

 in Bass vs. the State is reaffirmed; that the State in locating her 

 public levees acts in the exercise of her police power, and that any private 

 injury resulting therefrom is damnum absque injuria. 



Again, in the case of Ruch vs. the City of New Orleans, reported 

 in the 43d Annual, the Supreme Court of this State differentiates 

 between the exercise of the right of eminent domain and the police 

 power of the State, and holds, at page 284, that although private 

 property may be appropriated for a public roadway, the taking, under 

 such circumstances, is not in the exercise of the right of eminent domain, 

 but of the police power of the State, and that any loss sustained thereby 

 does not entitle the injured party to be recompensed therefor, the 

 injury being damnum, absque injuria, but that the right of expropria- 

 tion of property is in the exercise of the right of eminent domain 

 which entitles the owner to damages by way of compensation. 



In the case of Koerber vs. the Orleans Levee Board et als., 51 An., 

 it was contended that certain levee work done by the Board of Com- 

 missioners of the Orleans Levee Distrcit was not a work of emergency, 

 and that plaintiff's property could not be taken for public use 

 except through regular expropriation proceedings and prior com- 

 pensation. The Court said, at page 536: "Ordinarily, private 

 property should be taken for public use only by regular judi- 

 cial expropriation proceedings, but there are occasions when the public 

 safety requires and justifies the taking immediately of such property under 

 the police powers of the State." 



True it is that the Bass case decided upon a state of facts which 

 arose and existed at the time the Constitution of 1868 was in force, 

 and was governed by that Constitution, article no of which declares 

 that : "No ex post facto or retroactive law, nor any law impairing the obli- 

 gation of contracts, shall be passed, nor vested rights be divested, unless for 

 purposes of public utility and for adequate compensation." This article 

 of the Constitution of 1868 is found in previous Constitutions of this 

 State. For the first time the framers of our organic law saw fit to 

 adopt a new article when ,in 1879, they declared by article 156 that 

 "Private property shall not be taken nor damaged for public purposes 

 without just and adequate compensation being first paid." This iden- 

 tical language is again found in article 167 of the Constitution of 1898. 

 For the first time, in 1879 the Constitution provided for compensa- 



