494 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. [June 19, 
islative and judicial branches of the state and federal governments 
are all of limited and defined powers now found himself called upon 
to say whether one legislature could suspend for future legislatures, 
‘that well-known but undefined power called the police power.”’ 
He finds no better definition for this power than Kent’s, 2 Comm. 
340, which he had cited in the former case. 
“‘Unwholesome trades, slaughter-houses, operations offensive to the 
senses, the deposit of powder, the application of steam power to propel 
cars, the building with combustible materials and the burial of the dead, 
may all be interdicted by law, in the midst of dense masses of popula- 
tion, on the general and rational principle, that every person ought to so 
use his property as not to injure his neighbors, and that private interest 
must be made subservient to the general interests of the community.” 
The law had been upheld in the former case expressly because it 
was an exercise of the police power and saved from condemnation 
as an interference with freedom to follow an ordinary occupation by 
no other argument; therefore, the franchise could not now very 
well be defended as not being an act of police. The question 
was clearly whether the police power could be bound by a state 
contract granting an exclusive franchise for a term of years. Fol- 
lowing Stone vs. Mississippi and the preceding cases on which it is 
based, Justice Miller, who in the case of Fertilizing Company zs. 
Hyde Park, had refused to concur in this doctrine and had con- 
curred in that case only because he was able to persuade himself 
that the charter was not violated, now himself, in plain terms, holds 
that such power of the legislature is given it to use and not to sell, 
and cannot be restrained by contract. 
Justices Field and Bradley concur in this decision because they 
say the original act was void and not a police regulation at all, but 
a mere monoply, having such alone for its object. They again 
protest against the narrow limits given in the Slaughter-House cases 
to ‘‘ privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States,’’ 
but they themselves had since concurred in carrying that narrow 
construction into effect in more than one case, and it was now too’ 
late to widen it. 
At the same term, as in Hurtado vs. California it had been de- 
cided what was due process of law in a capital criminal case, so 
now in ’Hager vs. Re-Clamation District, the effect of that provi- 
LOTT (Oa Say 7 OUe 
