Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/677

LA VIN V. E MIGRANT INDUSTEIAL SAVINGS BANK. 669 �legislation within the limits of that large class of state legis- lation generally known as the police power of the states, which has been said to comprehend, in its -widest sense, "the whole System of internai regulation by which the state seeks not only to preserve the public order and to prevent offences against her authority, but also to establish, for the intercourse of one citizen with another, those rules of justice, morality and good'conduct ■which are caiculated to prevent a conflict of interests, and to insure to every one the uninterrupted enjoy- ment of his own, as far as is reasonably consistent with a like enjoyment of equal rights by others. It extends, says another eminent judge, to the protection of the lives, limbs, health, comfort and quiet of ail persons, and of ail property within the state, aa exemplified in the maxim, sic utere tuo ut alie- num non lœdas. Thorp y. Bailroad, 27 Y t. Ii7." Bj Clifford, J., dissenting, Tennessee v. Davis, S. C. U. S., October term, 1880. Judge Miller also says, (63 N. Y. 47e:) "Whiie a person is thus absent creditors may attach his property, the state may dispose of his real estate by a sale for taxes, and the local authorities of a municipality by an assessment sale." No question can be made of the power and right of the etate to provide by law for the application of the property of absent persons to the payment of their just debts. This is one of those cases in which the courts have recognized the giving of notice by publication according to law after an attachment as constructive notice, and such an attach- ment and publication would unquestionably be due pro- cess of law. So the right to levy on property for taxes is recognized as "due process of law," where, by long usage, and the necessity of the case, judicial "process" is not re- quired. But it may well be doubted whether any state ever provided for applying the property of an absent defendant to the payment of the owner's debts without an attachment, which is a seizure of the thing itself, or without publication, which is the best form of notice the circumstances admit of. Certainly the state of New York never passed such a law. On the contrary, the rights of absent defendants to "due process of law" are in these respects carefuUy guarded. The refer- ��� �