154 The Liquor Question. 



fit to pass, is in no sense the process of law designated by the 

 Constitution." 



In the case of Bertholfr. O'Reilly, 74 N. Y. 519, Judge Andrews, 

 speaking for the same court, said: "They (the words 'due process of 

 law ') are held, under the liberal interpretation given them, to protect 

 the life, liberty and property of the citizen against acts of mere arbi. 

 trary persons in any department of the government. These are the 

 fundamental civil rights for the security of which society is organized, 

 and all acts of legislation which contravene them are within the prohi- 

 bition of the constitutional guaranty." In Stuart v. Palmer, 74 

 N. Y. 190, Judge Earl said: "It is a rule founded on the first 

 principles of natural justice, older than written constitutions, that 

 a citizen shall not be deprived of his life, liberty or property 

 without an opportunity to be heard in defense of his rights, and 

 the constitutional provision that no person shall be deprived of 

 these 'without due process of law/ has its foundation in this rule. 

 This provision is the most important guaranty of personal rights to 

 be found in the Federal or State Constitutions. It is a limitation 

 upon arbitrary power, and is a guaranty against arbitrary legislation. 

 No citizen shall arbitrarily be deprived of his life, liberty or property. 

 This the Legislature cannot do, nor authorize to be done. ' Due pro- 

 cess of law' is not confined to judicial proceedings, but extends to 

 every case which may deprive a citizen of life, liberty or property, 

 whether the proceeding be judicial, administrative or executive in its 

 nature. This great guaranty is always and everywhere present to pro- 

 tect the citizen against arbitrary interference with these sacred rights." 

 "'Due process of law,' in each particular case, means," says Judge 

 Cooley, "such an exertion of the powers of government as the settled 

 maxims of the law sanction, and under such safeguards for the pro- 

 tection of individual rights as those maxims prescribe for the class of 

 cases to which the one in question belongs." In Murray's Lessee v. 

 Holoken Co., 18 How. Eep. (U. S.) 272, the Supreme Court of the 

 United States held that the provision as to " due process of law," was 

 a restraint on the legislative as well as the executive and judicial 

 powers of the government. 



These sacred rights of life, of liberty, of property, are guarded with 

 a jealous care, and every invasion of these guaranties will be steadfastly 

 resisted by every impulse of natural justice, by every lover of liberty 

 and justice, and will never again be overridden by arbitrary power, 

 whether legislative or executive, so long as an upright and intelligent 

 judiciary is permitted to interpose and declare the judgment of en- 



