416 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. [June 19, 
injury on another, but also that he shall actively comply with 
proper requirements of the civil authorities in many things, in this 
case in adjusting and placing his ship to accommodate himself to 
the other arrangements of the harbor-master. 
To say that this power in this instance is necessary is not to 
characterize it at all. It is necessary, indeed, to the public welfare, 
in the sense that such welfare would not be as well conserved with- 
out it as with it, but in no other. To say of any power now 
exercised by government that it, also, is not necessary, in that 
same sense, is to strip that power away as soon as such comes to be 
the general opinion. 
To say that this general authority over persons and property is 
given merely to prevent them from hurting one another and justify 
its extension only that far, is to give a ridiculously inadequate 
interpretation to all the facts of our daily lives and the relations of 
government to them. Is the only dealing of government with us 
and our possessions merely to prevent harm to others? Is it all 
the duty of a citizen to permit without resistance his possessions 
to be used for the general defense in a public emergency, and to 
himself abstain from so using such possessions as to injure anyone ? 
A man might, conceivably, be guilty of high treason who had 
failed in neither. 
The suggestion of the 'German speculators seems to be that the 
term police should be confined to protective action and legislation. 
This is, after all, only a difference in form. However it may be in 
Germany, a little experience with American lawyers and lawgivers 
will convince one that there is no difficulty in putting a require- 
ment that any particular thing be done for the public good into 
the form of an elaborate protection against the evils arising from 
not having it done. Asa practical line of division, Stein’s sug- 
gestion of a danger to be avoided, as furnishing the true occasion 
for police action, would hardly help much. In this country, those 
who are called upon to defend our common school system, which 
has so extensively taken children out of parental control, if not 
allowed to do so on the ground of providing for the general wel- 
fare by extending education, have no difficulty in adjusting them- 
selves to the situation by putting it on the basis of guarding against 
the evils of an uninstructed electorate. 
1 Stein’s Handbuch der Verwaltungs Lehre, s. 113 and 186-187; Bluntschli’s 
Lehre vom Modernen Staat, Vol. ii, s. 293. 
