Our federal government was established in a territory which was mostly a wilderness, with a fringe of frontier and colonial communities on the Atlantic seaboard. Whenever a state government has been first established, the territory of which it has been composed has been either wholly or very largely of a frontier character. In such communities opportunity was abundant and pretty much equal to all. Men started with not much advantage except that with which nature had endowed them. The differences in wealth were not such as to be beyond the hope of most men to bridge in a lifetime. The population was controlled by a community of feeling and a certain similarity of occupation. In such a society any attack upon property interests was bound to come home to too many to make such an attack possible. The practical danger was that states would permit the resident debtor class to repudiate its obligations to a non-resident creditor class. This was headed off by the very practical provision of the federal constitution that no state should pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts. Apart from this the governmental devices adopted to protect property interests were largely theoretical and academic. They were for the most part directed to preventing all sudden legislative action. Legislation must in every case be the result of “sober second thought.” No distinction was made between legislation which affected property interests and any other sort. The safeguards for securing the “sober second thought” of the electorate or legislature were as applicable to the most trivial legislative matters as to the most important. Thus we have the separation of the legislature into two houses. The members of both are elected. The only difference is that the number of the upper house is smaller and the term a little longer. We have also the limited veto power of the governor. Although not in terms provided for in our constitution, it has become a part of our scheme of government that the courts shall exercise the power of declaring void acts of the legislature which are forbidden by the written constitution. As these written constitutions have contained almost universally the provision that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” the courts have had the power to declare void acts of the legislature which they deemed to be a taking of the “liberty” or “property” of any person “without due process of law.” When exercised this power has amounted in effect to a judicial veto. If the court deem the act in question to have been forbidden by the constitution the act is invalid until such time as the constitution shall have been changed and the general prohibition eliminated, at least so far as the offending act in question is concerned. It was, however, only the taking “_without due process of law_” which was forbidden. But legislation was itself “due process of law” unless it