In its proper sense, individual liberty is a development of the Anglo-Saxon institutions. This doctrine is fundamental to the English Constitution. The principle is cardinal and vital in the American system of government. Individual rights are protected by constitutional restrictions upon power, federal and state. In the United States, every individual is a king. This accords with the so-called _laissez-faire_ doctrine, of modern development in England and the United States, which confines the sphere of government within the narrowest limits, and denies to it the power to do more than provide for public order and personal security, by the prevention and punishment of crimes and trespasses. Under the influence of this wholesome principle, with us and in Great Britain, for one hundred years, the encroachments of government upon the rights and liberties of the individual have been comparatively few. In other words, it has been generally admitted by the wisest and broadest statesmanship, that private rights and personal liberty do not exist by the permission of municipal law. They are natural and founded upon the law of reason; that, therefore, governmental restraint should “only go to the limit necessary to a uniform and reasonable conservation of private rights.” Municipal law protects and develops, rather than creates private rights and personal liberty. In the United States this “limit” has been generally fixed at the power to enforce the common and civil law maxim, “_sic utere tuo, ut alieum non lædas_.” The “police power,” it is called, and extends, in its broadest sense, to the preservation of peace and good order to the protection of property rights, “and of the lives, limbs, health and comfort of all persons.” Any law which goes beyond this, in the United States, at least, and undertakes to abolish rights, the exercise of which do not infringe upon the rights of others; or limits the exercise of rights beyond what is necessary for the public welfare and general security, is not properly within the police power.