Page:Earle, Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty, 1920, 136.jpg

136 adhering to the rule that constitutional provisions for the security of person and property should be liberally construed. A close and liberal construction deprives them of half their efficiency, and leads to gradual depreciation of the right, as if it consisted more in sound than in substance. It is the duty of Courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon. Their motto should be obsta principiis."

Certainly the Supreme Court was wrong in thinking that the danger to the Constitution was "in silent approaches and slight deviations" and in "stealthy encroachments," if all the purposes of the Constitution were to be swept away by a simple finding of the Judge that property was of sufficient value to be a public need. It can be believed that the worst and most despotic Government that ever existed did not take any property that was of no use. Even in the case of monopolistic enterprises, where some public check has been held to be necessary, no such doctrine has ever been applied as that the greater the value the smaller the right to Constitutional protection. It is certainly not construing the words "private property" "liberally" to hold that, although it is unqualified in the Constitution, it is to be read and confined to "private property of no use." But the Constitution cannot thus be frittered away, as the Courts have said so many times, and as early said in the Prigg Case, and even in the Craig Case.

It has already been shown what a disastrous effect such a ruling will have upon production. There are some other phases of this opinion which