Such being the limits of the police power, it is evident that, in order to secure any effective control of the environs of a public place, resort must be had to some authority of wider scope, and the only available power is that of eminent domain, under which the state and its agencies have the right to take any private property for a public use, upon providing just compensation. The areas adjacent to a public place could probably be controlled under this power, either by condemning them outright as a part of the improvement, or by condemning merely a qualified right to regulate and control them. If they were taken outright, the question would arise whether they could be resold subject to the necessary restrictions upon their future use; thus reducing the cost of the improvement to the extent of the increase in the value of this land caused by the improvement. The right to appropriate private property for public use is an attribute of sovereignty, existing in the state independently of written constitutions, and vested in the general assembly by those provisions of the constitution which confer upon that body the legislative power of the state. In Illinois, as in all of the states, the power of the legislature to take private property for the use of the community is subject to two constitutional limitations: one, that just compensation must be provided for all property so taken; the other, that private property cannot be taken, even upon payment of its full value, for any except a public use. These two restrictions are also imposed by the fourteenth amendment of the federal constitution, which declares that no state shall deprive any person of property without due process of law. Subject to these qualifications, the state has unlimited power to appropriate through its legislature any property within its borders which has become the subject of private ownership; and this power of eminent domain the legislature may delegate, with or without restrictions, to any subordinate agency. The expediency of the exercise of that power in any given case is a subject over which the courts have no control, unless they can say that the proposed use is not public. On these general principles all the authorities are agreed. The United States Supreme Court has frequently stated the principles of the law of eminent domain. In _Boom Company_ v. _Patterson_, 98 U. S. 403, Mr. Justice Field, in delivering the opinion of the court, said: