Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/253

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In interpreting the "specific clauses" of our organic law, the courts experience comparatively little difficulty, but in interpreting the "general clauses" there is a fair chance that they may go astray. The constitutional prohibition that no state shall grant letters of marque and reprisal, coin money, etc., is not easily misunderstood, but the words of the fourteenth amendment which prohibit the states from depriving any one of property without "due process of law" has a good deal of flexibility of meaning. In a general way, it means that no one shall be deprived of property without a hearing or without compensation unless "the general interests of the community" demand it. The interpretation of such a clause necessarily involves the exercise of legislative discretion.

What is necessary to the public health, safety and morals is a question which should be determined in the light of the particular facts and circumstances existing at a given time and place. These are matters which "the prevailing morality or the strong and preponderant opinion" of society should properly control.

A laissez-faire philosophy may have answered the needs of our grandparents, but it has little place amid the conditions of modern life. The political philosophy which holds that "that country is governed best which is governed least" may have been all well enough on the frontier, but it is out of date in an age of cities. When man's relations with his fellows were few and far between, comparatively few restraints upon the individual answered every purpose, but in the crowded center and in a time when the railway, the telephone and the telegraph have vastly