David Josiah Brewer

“ Each individual holds his property subject to the ordinary and reasonable exercise of the police power, and the fact that its exercise may in a particular case work pecuniary injury was adjudged insufficient to stay the legislative action. It is true those cases involved pecuniary injury to the persons whose action was prohibited, but it cannot be that the police power of a state can be stayed because it works injury to one person, and not stayed if it works injury to another. ”

“ If these limits hurt the present plaintiffs in error, other limits would hurt others. But clearly the inquiry as to the reasonableness or propriety of the limits is a matter for legislative consideration, and cannot become the basis of judicial action. The ordinance is an attempt to protect a part of the citizens from the unpleasant consequences of such neighbors. Because the legislative body is unable to protect all, must it be denied the power to protect any? ”

“ Who can say in advance that in proximity to their property any houses of the character indicated will be established, or that any persons of loose character will find near by a home? They may go to the other end on the named district. All that can be said is that by narrowing the limits within which such houses and people must be, the greater the probability of their near locatin. Even if any such establishment should be located in proximity, there is nothing in the ordinance to deny the ordinary right of the individual to restrain a private nuisance. ”

“ If he suffers injury it is either damnum absque injuria, or, in the theory of the law, he is compensated for it by sharing in the general benefits which the regulations are intended and calculated to secure. The citizen owns his property absolutely, it is true ”

“ In the second place, no person owning buildings outside of the prescribed limits is complaining that he is deprived of a possible tenant by virtue of the ordinance, or saying that the abridgment of her freedom of domicil operates to cut down the amount of his rents. ”

“ In the third place, it will be perceived that the ordinance does not attempt to give to persons of such character license to carry on their business in any way they see fit, or Indeed, to carry it on at all, or to conduct themselves in such a manner as to disturb the public peace within the prescribed limits. ”