society as organized into governments, interferes with the right to
property or the enjoyment and use thereof; that is to say, taxation,
which is, of course, general; eminent domain, a peculiarly American
doctrine; the police power; and the regulation of rates and charges.
Some authorities place the last under the police power; but It does
not seem to me that it historically, if logically, belongs there.

Starting with the simplest first--eminent domain, an American doctrine
which, in its simplest form, subjects the land of any one to the need
of the state or, in cases authorized by the Federal Constitution,
of the nation. It is questionable whether it applies to personal
property. It is an American doctrine, for in England where the king
remained in theory the feudal over-lord, it was not necessary for him
or the sovereign Parliament, wishing to take or control land, and
having no constitution protecting property rights against such action,
to invent any new doctrine; but with us all land is allodial. The old
charters of the original States creating tenures in free and common
socage are, of course, obsolete. Everybody is a freeholder, and the
States are not, still less the Federal government, a feudal over-lord.
Nevertheless, the property of every one must be subject to the supreme
common necessity; and the right is absolute in the States, although
limited in the national government by the Federal Constitution. It
is an American constitutional principle; and this principle also
provides, as does Magna Charta and the early charters of England as to
_personal_ property seized by royal purveyors, that full damages must
be paid; and to this general principle our constitutions have added
that the damages must be paid at the time of the taking and the amount
be determined by due process of law; that is to say, in most cases
by a jury. Blackstone says: "So great is the regard of the law for
private property that it will not authorize the least violation of it;
no, not even for the general good of the whole community";[1] a new
road, for instance, cannot be made without consent of the owner of the
land, and the words "eminent domain" do not appear in the text of his
book. But though we hold the contrary doctrine, the rights of the
property owner are sufficiently protected when the taking is directed
by the State, or even by a city or town. The menace to property here,
with the increasing bulk of legislation, comes in the number