1990.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 5381 
sent on the ground that the police power rests upon necessity and 
the right of self-protection, but private property cannot be arbi- 
trarily invaded under the mere guise of police regulation, nor for- 
feited for alleged violation of law by its owner, nor destroyed by 
way of penalty inflicted upon him without opportunity to be heard. 
The chief justice suggests that the utmost limit of police power here 
was to sequester the nets from use till their unlawful character 
should be ascertained in some sort of a hearing. 
The chief justice deprecates the use in the court’s opinion of 
arguments as to the smallness in value of the property destroyed. 
It would seem that if police regulations are to be required to be 
reasonable, if the extent of police interferences with private rights 
as well as commerce are to be proportioned to the public emer- 
gencies, such consideration as the insignificance of the property in- 
volved should be allowed. ‘That seems to be the point of view of 
most of the cases cited by Justice Brown. 
If the state may take life, property, liberty and all to suppress 
insurrection, repel an invasion or meet a sudden danger by fire or 
flood, may it not also take a few nets if wrongfully employed, and 
it is reasonably necessary for the public interests, and do so ina 
like summary manner ? 
In Bremen vs. City of Titusville,’ ten dollars was exacted of 
plaintiff for taking orders for crayon portraits, with frames for the 
same, to be manufactured in an adjoining state. The court held 
that this was a tax and not a police regulation and void as a bur- 
den on interstate commerce. 
In Reagan vs. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company,’ the question 
of railroad rates arose again. The state of Texas in 1891 had 
established a railtoad commission and authorized it, and made it 
the duty of such commission to adopt all necessary rates, charges 
and regulations to govern and regulate railroad freight and passen- 
ger tariffs, to correct abuses and prevent unjust discriminations 
and extortion in rates and enforce the same by having proper pen- 
alties inflicted as prescribed in the law. 
Something of a task, even when confined to a single state and 
one for whose accomplishment a number of more specific powers 
were conferred—to classify lines of road and kinds of freight; to 
establish reasonable rates in whole or in part as they should see fit. 
Notice and hearing for all railways concerned was required before 
1753 U. S., 289 (1894). 2754 (U7, Ss 302. 
