Let it be remembered, however, that I have always qualified the Private Ownership of Land by acknowledging the supremacy of the State. The tribe, the community, the State, the Government holds supreme power over the life and liberty of citizens, and over the ownership of the soil. The State calls for me to give up my individual pursuits, my individual liberty, my individual preference, and to take my place as a soldier in the ranks of the army. I am compelled to obey; that is an obligation which rests upon me as a member of society. Thus the State can demand my life of me whenever the State declares that it is necessary for the defence of the State. In like manner, the State can restrain me of my liberty. For instance, in times of epidemics, we have shotgun quarantine which destroys my liberty of movement. I would be shot down like a dog if I sought to break through the lines of quarantine, although to make such an escape might mean my individual salvation, whereas obedience to law amounts to sentence of death. In this case, as in the other, the State practically demands my life as an individual as a sacrifice for the good of the greater number of citizens. So, as to property, no man holds an absolute title to land as against the State. The Government, acting for all the tribe, for all the people, can tear down or burn my house to stop the spread of fire. It can confiscate my property for public purposes, when the public need requires it. It can take my land for public buildings, for canals, for railroads, or for new dirt roads through the country. My rights in the premises would be recognized in the payment to me of damages. My individual rights would be assessed in so many dollars and cents. Thus my home, which might be almost as dear to me as my life, would be coldly valued in money, and although I left it with bitter regrets, even with bitter tears and a bitter sense of wrong, I would have to surrender my individual preference to what is supposed to be by constituted authorities the necessity of the State. This right of the public to take away any portion of the soil from the individual, and to dedicate it to the use of the public, is called the right of Eminent Domain, and is a remnant of the old system which recognized that the title to all the lands was in the King. Of course the King stood for the State. Centered in the personal sovereign were those sovereign rights which belong to the people as a whole, and the people as a whole, represented by the King, were admitted to be the owners of the ultimate fee in the land, and could compel any individual to surrender his individual holdings for the benefit of the entire people, just compensation having first been paid to the individual. It is in that sense that I say private ownership of land is just as holy a principle, just as equitable, as private ownership in the basket which I made from the rushes I gathered along the stream, or from the splints which I rived