418 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE, [June 19, 
CHAPTER V. 
POLICE POWER AND PROPERTY AND CORPORATE RIGHTS. 
We have seen the right of the state courts to pass upon the con- 
stitutionality of laws established, and we have seen those courts 
passing upon that question with regard to what they called police 
regulations. We have seen those decisions supported by English 
precedents referring back to the old doctrine of overruling neces- 
sity, and also tothe maxim of Se utere tuo ut alienum non ledas. 
That these furnish too narrow a basis for the successful support of 
legislative authority, when crowded against on the one side by fed- 
eral restrictions and upon the other by the pressing forward of provi- 
sions embodied in state constitutions in defense of personal and 
property rights, was sought to be shown in the last chapter. 
That there must be left to the legislatures of the states a wider 
latitude of providing for the general welfare, and that as against a 
too urgent claim of individual rights an appeal would be made to 
a police power resting upon that principle, just as such power had 
been developed to support the states against pressure from the side 
of the federal gevernment, might have been anticipated and was 
what took place. 
The pressing of individualism against prohibitory liquor laws 
brought the police power under that name into the Illinois Supreme 
Court in 1852, as has been seen. The case, however, that seems 
to have really begun the vogue in the state courts of this phrase 
was ! Commonwealth vs. Alger and the opinion of Chief Justice 
Shaw of Massachusetts in that case in 1853. ‘This case furnishes a 
starting point for citations directly relating to the police power in 
most of the constitutional discussions that embrace the subject. It 
deserves the position both on its own account and that of the Mas- 
sachusetts magistrate who wrote the opinion, of whom Choate said 
that he was always approached with the feeling which a pagan 
has for his idol—that he was very ugly, but very great. 
The question raised was whether the owner in fee of real estate 
147 Cush., 53. 
