The Liquor Question. 



lightened civilization thereon. But neither the right to life nor to 

 liberty nor to property, measured by the relations necessarily existing 

 between the State and the citizen, is absolute, for above all constitutions 

 and laws stands the State, the embodiment of all the power of all the 

 people, clothed with an absolute authority, necessarily resulting from 

 the existence of the State, to guard and protect the public health, the 

 public morals and to promote the general well-being of society. These 

 are powers of State that are not restricted by constitutions or laws. 

 They involve the right of the State to protect itself from destruction, 

 to perpetuate its own existence. 



In the case of Stone v. Mississippi, 101 TJ. S. 816, where the con- 

 stitutional provision, prohibiting the State from making any law im- 

 pairing the obligations of contracts, was invoked against the repeal by 

 the State of a charter granted to a private corporation to conduct a 

 lottery, for which that corporation paid to the State a valuable con- 

 sideration in money, the United States Supreme Court said : " No 

 Legislature can bargain away the public health or the public morals; 

 the people themselves cannot do it, much less their servants. Govern- 

 ment is organized with a view to their preservation, and cannot divest 

 itself of the power to provide for them." In Butchers'' Union Co. v. 

 Crescent City Co., Ill U. S. 751, the same court held that the State 

 could not, by any contract, limit the exercise of her power to the 

 prejudice of the public health and the public morals. 



Again, in New Orleans Gas Co. v. Louisiana Light Co., 115 TJ. S. 

 650, 672, the same court said: "The constitutional prohibition upon 

 State laws impairing the obligation of contracts does not restrict the 

 power of the State to protect the public health, the public morals or 

 the public safety, as the one or the other may be involved in the ex- 

 ecution of such contracts. Rights and privileges arising from con- 

 tracts with the State are subject to regulations for the protection 

 of the public health, the public morals and the public safety in 

 the same sense and to the same extent as are all contracts and 

 all property, whether owned by natural persons or corporations." 

 In the Kansas appeal cases, the same court said: "The principle, 

 that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without 

 due process of law was embodied, in substance, in the Constitutions of 

 nearly all, if not all, of the States at the time of the adoption of the 

 fourteenth amendment, and it has never been regarded as incompati- 

 ble with the principle, equally vital, because essential to the peace and 

 safety of society, that all property in this country is held under the 



