Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/403

MEANING OF THE TERM LIBERTY^ 387 Butchers' Union Company v. Crescent City Company, in U. S. 746, is another case where some of the judges insisted upon such a construction of the term as would include the right to follow any lawful occupation. The appellee in this case was the com- pany to which the Legislature of Louisiana had, in 1869, granted the exclusive privileges for slaughter-houses which were sustained in the Slaughter-House Cases. The appellant company had received a grant of privileges of the same kind from the same State, in 1881, but had been restrained from exercising them by the lower courts. The Supreme Court now held that such privileges could be exer- cised by the appellants, that the power of a legislature to make an irrepealable contract did not extend to subjects affecting the public health and morals, so as to limit the future exercise of legislative power on those subjects, to the prejudice of the general welfare. In a concurring opinion Bradley, J. (with whom agreed Harlan and Woods, JJ.), who dissented in the Slaughter-House Cases, reasoned that the law creating the monopoly which was sustained in those cases abridged the privileges" of the other citizens of New Orleans, which the fourteenth amendment was intended to protect, and then declared : — But if it does not abridge the privileges of a citizen of the United States to prohibit him from pursuing his chosen calling, and giving to others the exclusive right of pursuing it, it certainly does deprive him (to a certain extent) of his liberty; for it takes from him the freedom of adopting and following the pursuit which he prefers ; which, as already intimated, is a material part of the liberty of the citizen. And if a man's right to his calling is his property, as many maintain, then those who had already adopted the prohibited pursuits in New Orleans were deprived, by the law in question, of their property, as well as their liberty, without due process of law. If "property" means pursuit of happiness, as the learned judge has before implied, it is difficult to perceive why there should be any distinction between a calling adopted and one not adopted. In either case one's "pursuit of happiness" may be interfered with by a prohibitive law. It is also difficult to distinguish liberty and property. If the latter has the meaning suggested, probably there is no distinction. The above seem to be the only federal decisions which throw any light on this subject. In any view they are unsatisfactory. In no case does the opinion which stands as that of the court