Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/382

 356 OCTOBER TERM, 1907. Opinion of the Court. 209 U.S. 46, 99; Georgia v. Te Cop Co., 206 U. S: 230, 238. What it may protect by suit in this court from interference in the name of property outside of the State's jurisdiction, one would think that it could protect by statute from interference in the same name within. On this principle of public interest and the police power, and not merely as the inheritor of a royal prerogative, the State may make laws for the preserva- tion of game, which seems a stronger case. Geer v. Connect/cut, 161 U.S. 519, 534. The problems of irrigation have no place here. =Leaving them on one side, it appears to us that few public interert are more obvious, indisputable and independent of particular theory than the interest of the public of a State to rcintain the riers that are wholly within it subetantially und/minlshed, except by such drafts upon them as the guardian of the public welfare may permit for the .purpo of turning them to a more perfect use. This public interest is omnipresent wherever there is a State, and grows more pressing as population grows. It is fundamental, and we are of opinion that the private prop- erty of riparian proprietors cannot be supposed to have deeper roots. Whether it be said tha.such an interest justifies the cutting down by statute, without compensation, in the ex- ercise of the police power, of what otherwise would be private rights-of property, or that apart from statute tho6e rights do not go to the height of wh the defendant seeks to do, the re- suit is the same. But we agree with the New Jersey coarts, and thln] it quite beyond any rational view of riparian r/ghts that an agreement, of no matter what private owners, could sanction the d/version of an important stream outside the boundaries of the State in which it flows. The private right to appropriate is subiect not only to the rights of lower owners but to the initial limitation that it may not ubetantlally d/minish one of the great foundations of public welfare and health. We are of opinion, further, that the constitutional power of the State to/nsist tkat its natural advantages h11 reinsin

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