Starting with the simplest first--eminent domain, an American doctrine which, in its simplest form, subjects the land of any one to the need of the state or, in cases authorized by the Federal Constitution, of the nation. It is questionable whether it applies to personal property. It is an American doctrine, for in England where the king remained in theory the feudal over-lord, it was not necessary for him or the sovereign Parliament, wishing to take or control land, and having no constitution protecting property rights against such action, to invent any new doctrine; but with us all land is allodial. The old charters of the original States creating tenures in free and common socage are, of course, obsolete. Everybody is a freeholder, and the States are not, still less the Federal government, a feudal over-lord. Nevertheless, the property of every one must be subject to the supreme common necessity; and the right is absolute in the States, although limited in the national government by the Federal Constitution. It is an American constitutional principle; and this principle also provides, as does Magna Charta and the early charters of England as to _personal_ property seized by royal purveyors, that full damages must be paid; and to this general principle our constitutions have added that the damages must be paid at the time of the taking and the amount be determined by due process of law; that is to say, in most cases by a jury. Blackstone says: "So great is the regard of the law for private property that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community";[1] a new road, for instance, cannot be made without consent of the owner of the land, and the words "eminent domain" do not appear in the text of his book. But though we hold the contrary doctrine, the rights of the property owner are sufficiently protected when the taking is directed by the State, or even by a city or town. The menace to property here, with the increasing bulk of legislation, comes in the number of _new_ uses, not only directly for the State or for cities and towns, but for public-service corporations, or often other private corporations, and associations of persons, who are permitted by legislation to take land under eminent domain, or, what is often worse, to acquire easements over it. Most of the States give damages for land not actually taken, but damaged, though our Federal courts have not held this to be necessary under the Fourteenth Amendment; but although land can still, in theory, only be taken for a public use, the number of uses which our legislation makes public Is being enormously increased. The usual national purposes are forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings. Independent of some express permission in the Constitution, the Federal government has no power to take, or even to own, land at all within the State limits. Therefore, it is questioned