Page:State v. Buzzard.pdf/3

20

Rh

, possesses adequate powers to provide, by laws adapted to the purpose, the means by which those who compose the community shall aggregately and individually be secured in the full and complete enjoyment. of all such benefits as may be derived from the operation or influence of the government. And in the execution of this power, and the performance of the high and important obligations devolved upon it, the Legislature possesses, and must necessarily exercise a discretion as to the means best calculated to attain the object, which in the nature of things is, and must remain, without control, provided no right vested by the constitution, or other authority paramount to that of the Legislature, be by their enactment infringed or divested. Now, if I have not wholly mistaken the objects for which the government was instituted, the trusts confided to it, and the powers with which it is invested, those who subjected themselves to its operation, must, in consideration of the advantages which they trusted and believed would result from it to themselves and posterity, have voluntarily surrendered or subjected to the control of the public authorities provided for the administration of the government many if not all of the rights of which, independent of all government, they would have been possessed without any restriction whatever. For instance, the right of any individual to redress, according to the dictates of his own will or caprice, any injury inflicted upon his personal or private rights by another, is surrendered; and the right of determining not only what his rights are, but also whether they have been invaded, and the kind and measure of redress to which he is entitled, are all referred to the arbitrament of the law. Also the natural right of speech must remain without restraint, if it were not surrendered and subjected to legal control upon the institution of government; yet every one is aware that such limitations as have been found necessary to protect the character and secure the rights of others, as well as to preserve good order and the public peace, have been imposed upon it by law, without any question as to the power of the government to enforce such restrictions. So the liberty of the press, which is based upon the right of speech, is to the like extent subject to legal control. So the right of migration and transmigration, or of every individual to pass from place to place, according to his own free will and pleasure,