1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 425 
He then admits that the franchise of a private corporation is pri- 
vate property, and he grants, on the authority of the Dartmouth Col- 
lege case, its right to protection as such, but declines to adopt such 
a construction as would put the whole subject, not only of railways 
but all other corporate interests, beyond legislative control. He 
maintains the right to enact new restrictions reasonably requisite 
to the public welfare. 
He, too, brings up the slaughter-house and powder-mill illustra- 
tions, and he, too, cites the American and English cases as to the 
principles on which executive officers are authorized to interfere 
with private property—the right to abate nuisances and to act in 
sudden emergencies, both of which had been so often upheld both 
in this country and England. He also recognizes as clearly as did 
Chief Justice Shaw that to support the claim of the legislature to 
the power he is sustaining to its full extent, he must draw upon 
something more potent and get something from the supreme legis- 
lative authority of Parliament. 
Whether Judge Redfield, or Judge Shaw, or Judge Trumbull in 
People vs. Jones perceived distinctly that in holding the constitu- 
tional provisions in the bills of rights to have been enacted with 
reference to the principles and precedents of English law, and not 
to be considered to interfere with such principles unless they did so 
in explicit terms, they were making that law and those precedents 
the real constitution of their states, more or less in disregard of 
those principles of ‘‘ Locke, Sidney, Rousseau and DeMably com- 
bined and reduced to practice,’’ which John Adams thought had 
been enacted, is not quite clear. 
Chief Justice Redfield closes: 
** We conclude, then, that the authority of the legislature to make the 
requirement of existing railways may be vindicated because it comes 
fairly within the police of the state. 2. Because it regards the 
division fence between adjoining proprietors. 3. Because it properly 
concerns the safe mode of exercising a dangerous occupation or busi- 
ness; and 4. Because it is but a reasonable provision for the protec- 
tion of domestic animals, all of which interests fall legitimately within 
the range of legislative control, both in regard to natural and artificial 
persons.” 
The police power, now fairly under that name, just a little past 
the middle of the century, had fully inaugurated its struggle to 
maintain government control over corporate aggressiveness and pri- 
