. Naturally,
we find no new legislation confirming the right of property
abstractly, or restating that that institution is part of our
civilization. There is but one significant exception to this
statement. While most of the States in their constitutions declare
that men have a natural right to acquire, possess, and protect
property, and Kentucky and Arkansas go to the length of saying that
the right of property is "before and higher than any constitutional
sanction"--which latter statement is a legal hyperbole--Oklahoma in
its recent constitution, North Carolina, and Missouri state only that
men have a natural right to the enjoyment of the fruits of their own
labor; on the other hand there are recent intimations coming from
Federal sources that individualism or private property rights, at
least, and not anarchism or socialism, are part of our constitutional
system. Before 1907 a Texas district judge refused to naturalize an
immigrant on the ground that he was a socialist and that socialism was
inconsistent with the Federal Constitution; and in that year Congress
passed an act to regulate all immigration of aliens, which excludes,
among other classes, persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow
by force or violence of the government of the United States or of all
government, or of all forms of law--a definition which would exclude
anarchists, but not socialists; and in the case of South Carolina _v_.
United States (199 U.S. 437), the Supreme Court of the United States
gave serious consideration to the question whether State socialism was
compatible with a republican form of government. This is all, so far
as I am aware, that a century and a half of legislation has given us
affirming the abstract right of property, though there are several
constructive statutes and constitutional provisions applied to the
general right to trade or labor, which we shall consider when we come
to that subject.

When a right is expressly guaranteed by the Constitution, we need
ordinarily have no affirmative legislation about it. Liberty and
property being always guaranteed by the State constitutions, it has
not been necessary for the States to legislate to protect them.

Our study of this subject, therefore, will be confined to the
restrictive or limiting legislation affecting private property or
property rights, and of this we shall find plenty. Now there are four,
and only four, methods by which the state, that is to say, American