Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/406

390 the person of the citizen, as by incarceration, but is deemed to embrace the right of man to be free in the enjoyment of the faculties with which he has been endowed by his Creator, subject only to such restraints as are necessary for the common welfare.

The last New York case in which the point has been touched upon is People v. King, 11O N. Y. 4I8, where the court remarked, obiter: —

It is not necessary at this day to enter into any argument to prove that the clause in the bill of rights is to have a large and liberal interpretation, and that the fundamental principle of free government, ex- pressed in these words, protects not only life, liberty, and property, in a strict and technical sense against unlawful invasion by the government, but also protects every essential incident to the enjoyment of those rights.

There is also a very recent decision by the Court of Appeals of West Virginia 1 in which similar expressions are used. An act of that State prohibited persons engaged in mining and manufacturing from issuing for the payment of labor any order or paper except such as was specified in the act. The court held such act void as being "an encroachment both upon the just liberty and rights of the workman and his employer, or those who might be disposed to employ him." The court cites with approval the passage in People v. Gillson, above quoted. Although, however, the opinion does apparently rest upon the ground that the act was an infringement of the plaintiff's liberty, the " life, liberty, and property" clause strictly so called is not mentioned at all. The court quotes an entirely different section of the constitution of West Virginia, namely, article 3, section 1, which declares, like the Declaration of Independence, that all men are born free and equal, and have the right to pursue happiness, etc. Such a clause may well be held to include all the rights which the laws of West Virginia afford. It is also noticeable that the act is held to be an invasion of the right of property, and that the expressions used by the minority of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Slaughter-House Cases are repeated. The court says: "The property which every man has in his own labor, as it is the original founda-