1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 427 
CHAPTER VI: 
THE POLICE POWER AND STATE CONSTITUTIONS AND LIQUOR AND 
SunpDay Laws. 
The force of popular feeling meanwhile had introduced another 
line of legal disputes over the authority of the legislature in the 
states. It has been mentioned that the Supreme Court of Illinois 
in 1852 declared that total prohibition of sales of intoxicants for 
use as beverages was a proper exercise of the police power. Licen- 
sing legislation had long been recognized especially in New Eng- 
land, and Judge Trumbull had no difficulty in extending the pre- 
cedents to complete prohibition. 
During this and the few years immediately preceding and follow- 
ing, a great wave of sentiment in favor of compulsory temperance 
had gone across the country and so a number of cases in the higher 
courts relating to this subject resulted. In 1853, the next year 
after the decision just mentioned in Illinois, came the case of Our 
Home vs. The State in Iowa, in which the question was as to the 
validity of a law forbidding sales of intoxicants as beverages and 
condemning as public nuisances places where they were sold in 
violation of the law. Justice Woodward, another New Englander, 
in a strong opinion upholds the right of the state to legislate upon 
this matter in the way it had done, and discusses the whole subject 
in the light of The Mayor of the City of New York vs. Miln. He 
cites, too, the License cases and especially a decision by Judge 
Shaw in Massachusetts, McGirr vs. Fisher, in which also the 
Massachusetts chief justice acted upon English and early American 
precedents, far more than modern constitutional provisions, in up- 
holding a liquor law of that state. Judge Woodward found the 
Iowa law valid against all claims of the sacredness of private 
property. 
In the following year, 1854, Michigan, in 'People vs. Hawley, 
following principally the federal cases, finds the prohibition of sales 
of intoxicating liquors a rightful use of the police power. But the 
1 3 Mich., 330. 
