Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/383

 209 U.S. Opinion oI th Court. unimpaired by its citizens is not dependent upon any nice estimate of the extent of present use or speculation as to future needs. The legal conception of the necessary is apt to be confined to somewhat rudimentary wants, and there are benefits from a ;reat river that might escape a lawyer's view. But the State is not reqnired to submit even to an aesthetic anslysis. Any analysis may be inadequate. It finds itself in poesession of what all admit to be a great public good, and what it has it may keep and give no one a reason for its will, The defense under the Fourteenth Amendment is disposed of by what we have said. That under Article I, �, needs but a few words more. One whose rights, such as they are, are subject to state restriction, cannot remove them from the power of the State by making a contract about them. The contract will carry with it the infirmity of the subject matter. Kox. Water Co. v. Koxv)., 189 U.S. 434, 438; Maailault v. $pr/.]s, 199 U.S. 473, 480. But the contract, the execution of which is sought to be prevented here, was illegal when it Was made. The other defenses also may receive short answers. A man cannot acquire a right to property by his desire to use it in commerce among th States. Neither can he enlarge his other- wise limited and qualified right to the same end. The case is covered in this respect by Gear v. Connecticut, 161 U. S. 519, and the same decision disposes of the argument that the New JerSey law denies equal privileges t the citizens of New York. It constantly 'is necesa to reconcile and to adjust different constitutional principles, each of which would be entitled to possion of the disputed ground but for the presence of the others, as we already have said that it is necessary to recon- cile and to adjust different principles of the common law. See Abdl v. KaY, aS, p. 251. The right to receive water from a river through pipes is subject to territorial limits by nat/re, and thoee limits may be fixed by the State within which the river flows, even if they are 'made to coincide with the stkte line. Within the boundary citizens 0f New York are as free

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