EMINENT DOMAIN.
Another one of the highest attributes of sovereignty is the right of eminent domain.
This is defined to be "the right of the sovereign government to appropriate and control individual property for the benefit of the whole State."
Before any law can be justified as an exercise of this great department of legislative power it must clearly appear that the destruction of individual rights, and the appropriation of individual property which it contemplates are "for the benefit of the whole State." If the benefits to arise from its operation are to be confined to any part of the community less than the general public, the act can not be referable to the right of Eminent Domain.
The purpose of the acts under discussion is to authorize the draining and protecting of wet lands. In the very nature of things their operation and their benefits must be confined to a few localities, comparatively small both in population and territory. In what department of legislative power, then, must we seek for a justification for these laws? Clearly not in Eminent Domain, because, both in their operation and benefits, they are local and not general.
