1900. ] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 495 
sion upon property rights was determined. The California law for 
reclaiming swamp and overflowed tide-lands and making them fit 
for culture was assailed. Districts were to be formed and the re- 
clamation of such land therein undertaken on a petition by a 
majority of owners of lands concerned. Engineers were to be em- 
ployed and three trustees be selected from the owners who were to 
report plans of work and estimates of costs to the county super- 
visors, and the latter were to appoint three commissioners to assess 
on each acre to be benefited, its proportionate share of expense to 
be collected with the annual taxes. IPf necessary the commissioners 
might make another assessment and report the additional amount. 
The assessments were to remain with the supervisors thirty days, 
and if not then paid to be sent to the district attorney to be col- 
lected like delinquent taxes. 
In Yolo and Colusa counties 74,000 acres of land in one body 
capable of such reclamation was found. A district was formed and 
the commissioners estimated the expense at $140,000; it was 
found, however, that $192,000 more was required, and it was all 
assessed upon the lands. It was not paid and suits to collect it 
were transferred by non-resident owners to the federal Circuit 
Court, and there the lands were ordered sold to pay the assessments, 
and from this decree an appeal taken. The proceeding was held to 
be due process of law and the decrees affirmed. The act is held to 
be within the police powers of the state in providing for the general 
welfare and in no way interfered with by the terms of the fourteenth 
amendment. 
With the setting aside of the civil rights bill and the final settle- 
ment of the right of the federal government to supervise the elec- 
tion of federal officers, the reconstruction cases seemed to have 
closed, and with the final upholding of the legal tender act, at the 
same term, the legal results of the war seemed to have been practi- 
cally realized. The development of the results of the fourteenth 
amendment, however, as applied to the commercial life of the 
country, foreshadowed in Fuller vs. Railroad Company and the 
Granger cases was just beginning. 
Just as the development of the doctrine of the Dartmouth Col- 
lege case and of Gibbons vs. Ogden in bringing forward federal re- 
straint against state action by way of impairing the obligation of 
contracts and regulating commerce, had rendered a corresponding 
development of state power inevitable, and had given us the term 
