If any local legislation authorizing the condemnation and sale of surplus lands were brought to the test, the question for the courts would be whether the use for which the property was taken was a public one; and it must be borne in mind that upon this point the judgment of the Supreme Court of a state would not be final. By the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States it is provided that no state shall deprive any person of property without due process of law; and it is now settled that this clause prohibits the taking of private property for any use that is not public. The United States Supreme Court, however, has always paid the greatest deference to the opinions of state legislatures and the state judiciary as to what uses are public. The power of the United States Supreme Court to review a state decision in this particular, and also the extreme respect which will be paid to local decisions, are both well illustrated in the case of _Clark_ v. _Nash_, 198 U. S. 361, sustaining a statute of the state of Utah, by the terms of which an individual land owner was empowered to condemn the right of conveying water in a ditch across his neighbor’s land for the purpose of irrigating his own farm. Mr. Justice Peckham, delivering the opinion of the court, said: “In some states, probably in most of them, the proposition contended for by the plaintiffs in error would be sound. But whether a statute of a state permitting condemnation by an individual for the purpose of obtaining water for his land or for mining should be held to be a condemnation for a public use, and therefore a valid enactment, may depend upon a number of considerations relating to the situation of the state and its possibilities for land cultivation, or the successful prosecution of its mining or other industries. Where the use is asserted to be public, and the right of the individual to condemn land for the purpose of exercising such use is founded upon or is the result of some peculiar condition of the soil or climate, or other peculiarity of the state, where the right of condemnation is asserted under a state statute, we are always, where it can fairly be done, strongly inclined to hold with the state courts, when they uphold a state statute providing for such condemnation. * * *