152 



The Liquor Question. 



without any control or diminution, save only by the laws of the land." 

 Chancellor Kent says (2 Com. 320): "The exclusive right of using 

 and transferring property follows as a natural consequence from the 

 perception and admission of the right itself." And again (p. 326): 

 " The power of alienation of property is a necessary incident to the 

 right, and was dictated by mutual convenience and mutual wants." 

 By another author, property is defined as an " exclusive right to things, 

 containing not only a right to use those things, but a right to dispose 

 of them, either by exchanging them for other things, or giving them 

 away to another person without consideration, or even throwing them 



Judge Comstock, in the case cited, further said: " When a law 

 annihilates the value of property, and strips it of its attributes, by 

 which alone it is distinguished as property, the owner is deprived 

 of it according to the plainest interpretation and certainly within 

 the spirit of a constitutional provision intended expressly to shield 

 private rights from the exercise of arbitrary power." Judge Sei- 

 dell, in the same case, says : 1 < A man may be deprived of his prop- 

 erty in a chattel, therefore, without its being seized or physically 

 destroyed, or taken from his possession. Whatever subverts his 

 rights in regard to it annihilates his property in it. It follows that a 

 law which should provide in regard to any article in which a right of 

 property is recognized, that it should neither be sold or used * * * 

 would fall directly within the letter of the constitutional inhibition." 

 Judge Hubbard, in the same case, says: "But the abolition of all 

 rights of sale in the statute is equivalent to and is a substantial de- 

 privation of the owner of his property. The right of sale is of the 

 very essence of property in any article of merchandise; it is its chief 

 characteristic; take away its vendible quality and the article is practi- 

 cally destroyed." 



Andrews, J., in Bertholf v. O'Reilly, 74 N. Y. 515, says: "The 

 main guaranty of private rights against unjust legislation is found in 

 that memorable clause in the Bill of Rights, that no person shall 'be 

 deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.' (Const., 

 art. 1, § 6.) This guaranty is not construed in any narrow or technical 

 sense. The right to life may be invaded without its destruction. One 

 may be deprived of his liberty in a constitutional sense without putting 

 his person in confinement. Property may be taken without manual 

 interference therewith or its physical destruction. The right to life 

 includes the right of the individual to his body in its completeness, 

 and without dismemberment ; the right to liberty, the right to exercise 



