Property eminently stands in need of every parchment barrier, which has been or can be thrown around it. An eminent Judge in our own State once threw out the opinion that there existed in the Constitution no disaffirmance of the power of the legislature to take the property of an individual for _private uses_ with or without compensation. "The clause," he argued, "by which it is declared that no man's property shall be taken or applied to _public_ use, without compensation made, is a disabling, not an enabling one, and the right would have existed in full force without it." (Harvey _v._ Thomas, 10 Watts, 63.) Fortunately, the decision of the court in that case did not require a resort to that reasoning, and but little examination was sufficient to satisfy the mind that this _obiter dictum_ was unsustained by either principle or authority. A power in the legislature to take the property of A. and give it to B. directly, would be of the very essence of despotism. When it is declared in the Bill of Rights that no man shall be deprived of his life, liberty, or property, unless by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land, this phrase, "law of the land," does not mean merely an act of the legislature. If it did, every restriction upon the legislative department would be practically abrogated. By an authority as old as Lord Coke, in commenting upon these same words in _Magna Charta_, they are to be rendered "without due process of law: that is, by indictment or presentment of good and lawful men, when such deeds be done in due manner, or by writ original of the common law, without being brought into answer but by due process of the common law." (2 Inst. 50.) The American laws are numerous and uniform to the point (see 1 American Law Mag. 315); and the same eminent Judge, to whom reference has been made in a later case, declared his adhesion to the sound and true doctrine in the most emphatic language, without noticing his own previous _dictum_ to the contrary. "It was deemed necessary," said he, "to insert a special provision in the Constitution to enable them (the legislature) to take private property even for public use, and on compensation made; but it was not deemed necessary to disable them specially in regard to taking the property of an individual, with or without compensation, in order to give it to another, not only because the general provision in the Bill of Rights was deemed sufficiently explicit for that, but because it was expected that no legislature would be so regardless of right as to attempt it. Were this reasonable expectation to be disappointed, it would become our plain and imperative duty to obey the immediate and paramount will of the people, expressed by their voices in the adoption of the Constitution, rather than the repugnant will of their delegates acting under a restricted but transcended authority." (Norman _v._ Heist, 5 W. & S. 171.)