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HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. [June 19, 
CHAPTER aime 
GOVERNMENT VERSUS LIBERTY IN. THE SUPREME Court. 
An examination of the police power involves the following of an 
extended discussion in nearly every important case, for it is still 
true, as it was in the beginning, that the raising of a serious ques- 
tion over this matter means a divided court and a judicial debate. 
It is not to be forgotten that we are here engaged with the very 
subject and department of law in which Bentham so vehemently 
assailed Blackstone. 
“‘ A task of no less intricacy was here to be traveled through than that 
of adjusting the claims of those two jealous antagonists, liberty and gov- 
ment.” + 
A little investigation will satisfy any one, as it satisfied Bentham, 
that 
‘‘a more invidious ground is scarcely to be found anywhere within the 
field of politics.” 
So it comes that scarcely an important decision, as to the limits of 
the legislature’s power in any direction where its employment is at 
all new, as to which the judges do not disagree. 
Not, however, in the case of New York & New England R. R. 
Co. vs. The Town of Bristol.” The railroad company appealed 
from a decision of the state court upholding a law authorizing the 
railroad commissioners to peremptorily require under certain cir- 
cumstances grade crossings to be removed and replaced. The 
case was not only affirmed but dismissed as raising no new question 
with Judge Miller’s remark in Davidson vs. New Orleans,’ that the 
fourteenth amendment could not be used 
‘Cas a means of bringing to the test of the decision of this court the 
abstract opinions of every unsuccessful litigant in the state courts of the 
justice of the decision against him and of the merits of the legislation 
against him on which such a decision may be founded.” 
1 Fragment on Government, Chap. iv, Sec. 15. 2761 Oa S550: 
5196°05:, 07 (1877). 
