412 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. [June 19, 
rights and the sacredness of contracts against English rulings and 
the manifest needs of public policy. The latter urged the sustain-— 
ing of the ordinance, and sustained it was. Something more than a 
paper constitution is needed to turn aside an established course of 
public action and lead officers to surrender power whose use has be- 
come habitual and is supported by public sentiment around them. 
The power to so order the use of property that it should not prove 
pernicious to the citizens generally was so plainly necessary that no 
general provision of a bill of rights could take it away. 
So in 1831, when in ‘Beatty vs. Perkins an attack was made on 
search warrants through the means of an action of trespass against 
the one who procured it, English precedents were wholly followed 
by the court in rejecting the new action. 7*Before this, in 1826, in 
the case of Brick Presbyterian Church vs. Mayor of New York, an 
express agreement by-the city authorities of New York that the 
premises conveyed by them to the complaining church should be 
used as a cemetery was appealed to in vain, and the clause of the 
federal constitution against impairing the obligation of contracts 
held of no avail to bind the corporate powers of the city, 
‘which had been given her to use and not to sell or convey away.” 
The inhabited part of the city had, when the site of the ceme- 
tery was by the city conveyed to the church for the purpose, not 
extended so far, and the location had been sufficiently removed. 
With advancing population its continued use for that purpose en- 
dangered the health of the surrounding people, and an ordinance 
forbidding its further employment for the purpose for which it was 
granted was sustained. 
In *Buffalo vs. Webster, in 1833, an ordinance of the city requir- 
ing all hucksters to take out license was upheld and enforced against 
one not an inhabitant, and in ‘Mayor vs. Lord, in 1837, it was de- 
termined that the city of New York was liable for property destroyed 
in order to stop a conflagration only to the extent provided in the 
statute of the state, and that the constitutional provision as to com- 
pensation. did not extend to property taken in such an emergency. 
So in 1836, in®Van Worman vs. Mayor, the pulling down of 
barns and sheds summarily as nuisances and without trial by the 
16 Wend., 382. 3 10 Wend., 99. 
25 Cow., 538. 418 Tae w20. 
5 75 Ld., 262. 
