1900.] HASTINGS— POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. dOL 
New Orleans for the purpose of conveying water from the Mississippi 
river to his hotel ; in common with all corporations and other citizens of 
New Orleans, he must abide by the contract which the state made with 
the plaintiff, for such is the mandate of the constitution of the United 
States.” 
He concedes that regulating the supply of light and water to a 
municipality is a police function ‘‘ in the widest definition ”’ of the 
term. He grants that the cases of Stone vs. Mississippi, Fertilizing 
Company vs. Hyde Park and Beer Company vs. Massachusetts 
establish that no corporate franchise can be held to interfere with 
the right and duty of the state to guard the public health, morals 
and safety. Within this limit the police power prevails over the 
constitution as expounded in the Dartmouth College case. 
That a supply of light and water has relation to health, and on the 
authority of Macaulay’s remark that the gas companies in London, 
by lighting it, had done more to suppress crime than all the gov- 
ernments since Alfred, also to safety, if not to morals, is admitted ; 
but the connection is held not close enough to restrain the applica- 
tion of the Dartmouth College precedent. The distinction from the 
case of Butchers’ Union Company vs. Crescent City Live Stock 
Company is still harder to draw. Water supply would seem to have 
as close a connection with public health and morals as butchering, 
but .Judge Harlan says the original franchise, in that case, was up- 
held only as a mere police regulation and was repealable as such. 
Under these decisions we have two kinds of police power, one of 
which is restrained by valid contracts made by the state, and the 
other, which has to do with public health, safety and morals, is not. 
The result is, that the doctrine of Stone vs. Mississippi is not ex 
tended to municipal franchises for supplying water and light. ‘The 
plain truth seems to be in questions of this kind, if the public emer- 
gency is one that has been deemed by former courts urgent enough 
to overthrow the municipal contract, then the latter goes down ; if 
not, then the doctrine of the Dartmouth College case is applied and 
the contract upheld. Meanwhile the court is careful to point out 
that there is a remedy—by the exercise of the power of eminent do- 
main to condemn the franchise, by paying for it and removing it 
when it becomes intolerable. 
At this same session another clause of the constitution did not 
come off so well in a contest with the police power. In *Morgan’s 
1718 U. S., 455 (1886). 
