municipal law, and is no more sacred than any other. Rights of property which have been created by the common law can not be taken away without due process; but the law itself, as a rule of conduct, may be changed at the will or even at the whim of the legislature, unless prevented by constitution limitations. Indeed the great office of statutes is to remedy defects in the common law as they are developed, and to adapt it to changes of time and circumstances."14 Some of the states in their Constitutions, in substance, contain the provision of Magna Charta, that "every man shall have a remedy for injury done him in person, property, or reputation." Nevertheless, the principle last above stated has been sustained in states having such a constitutional provision.15 "Conceding that a cause of action for personal injuries is property, the cause of action, i. e., the property must exist before one can be deprived of it at all. A statute which abrogates a cause of action for personal injury before such cause of action has arisen or before the injury occurs, or requires certain things to be done by the injured party as conditions precedent to a cause of action, does not deprive the injured party of his property rights without due process of law. In other words, the legislature may create a right of action which never existed, if in doing so it does not affect rights which vested prior thereto. A party injured after the legislature has taken away the right of action for personal injuries can no more complain of it than a party against whom a right of action is given for an injury resulting in death, can of such a legislative enactment. 14 Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113, 24 L. ed. 77. Applied to the relation of master and servant in Vindicator Consol. Gold Min. Co. v. Firstbrook, 36 Colo. 498, 86 Pac. 313, 10 A. & E. Ann. Cas. 1108. 15 Templeton v. Linn County, 22 Ore. 313, 51 L. R. A. 730, 29 Pac. 795; William v. Galveston, 41 Tex. Civ. App. 63, 90 S. W. 505. For the one party is no more injuriously affected by such legislation than the other. In the one case what was before actionable ceases to be so; in the other, what was not before actionable becomes so."16 § 74. Validity as to the State-Public interest.Workmen's insurance and compensation acts generally provide for the creation of a new department for their administration, the expenses of which are borne by the state. The usual limitation on the right of the state to expend the moneys of the state is that the expenditure shall be for a public purpose. It is clear that it is a public purpose to pay the salaries and defray the office, traveling and court expenses of state officials, and other expenses of a state department charged with the administration of a branch of the police power of the state, just as the state bears without question the expense of administration of other departments, e. g., the railroad commission, mine, factory, grain and hotel inspection, all operating under the police power. § 75. The problem of industrial insurance.-The inquiry at the outset of the discussion would seem to be: Has the state the power to regulate industries for the purpose of protecting the economic welfare of the community by levying a tax in the form of an insurance obligation upon the same for the benefit of the employés injured while employed in such industries? And again, if the state has a right to levy such a tax may it as part of the private rights appropriated by it for the benefit of the common good, take from the employé the right now belonging to him to redress his personal injury caused by the default of his employer by recovering. damages from the latter? 16 Sawyer v. El Paso, etc., R. Co., 49 Tex. Civ. App. 106, 108 S. W. 718. § 76. Whether these laws infringe constitutional limitations.-The insurance and compensation acts are generally contested on the ground that they are violative of recognized constitutional limitations, in that they authorize the taking of property without due process of law, they lack uniformity of operation, they curtail unlawfully the administration of judicial authority, they authorize the taking of private property for private use, they authorize the taking of private property for public use, they delegate legislative powers, they impair the obligation of contracts between employer and employé, they amount to an unreasonable exercise of the police power. 877. Insurance acts sustainable against constitutional objections under analogous decisions.-—It is believed that insurance acts are already well grounded as against the foregoing constitutional objections in four distinct lines of cases in American jurisprudence. These cases are (a) The bank depositors guarantee act cases; (b) The sheep-dog law cases; (c) The cases which justify the enactment of a law which authorizes the creation of a fund to be disbursed by a state commission in the erection and operation of a state asylum for inebriates; (d) The cases which uphold statutes imposing a liability upon fire insurance agents, of the nature of a tax, based upon the amount of insurance effected by them, for the creation of a fund to care for and cure sick and injured firemen. § 78. Analogous decisions-Application to insurance acts. Each class of these four lines of cases is an example of the police power of the states to create a fund by taxation for the protection of the health, safety and general welfare of classes of citizens and the general public. The rule is that an ulterior public advantage may justify a comparatively insig nificant taking of private property for what, in its immediate purpose, is a private use. The principles involved in the New York Compensation Act do not fall within this rule. There the removal of the defenses of the employer, and making him personally liable for any sum from a few dollars to $3,000.00 in cases where heretofore he was not liable at all, so to speak, taking his property in chunks for which heretofore he was not liable at all and allowing the employé to choose to take under the new act, or to sue under the old liability or common-law, is taking property without the process of law. This line of cases authorizes the state legislatures to provide for summary methods of collecting and distributing the several funds through the executive and admministrative arms of the state, in a manner similar to that provided by the insurance and compensation acts through the Liability Board of Awards. § 79. Analogous decisions-Bank depositors' guarantee acts. That the foregoing constitutional limitations are safely guarded is borne out by reference to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the bank depositors guaranty cases. 17 In these cases state legislatures required the creation of funds for the purpose of protecting depositors in insolvent banks. In Oklahoma the statute created a board and directed it to levy on every bank existing under the laws of the state an assessment of a certain per cent. of the bank's average daily deposits, with certain deductions, for the purpose of creating a depositors' guaranty fund. Said Mr. Justice Holmes: "We must be cautious about pressing the broad 17 Noble State Bank v. Haskell, 219 U. S. 104, 55 L. ed. 112, 31 Sup. Ct. 299; Shallenberger v. First State Bank, 219 U. S. 114, 31 Sup. Ct. 189, 55 L. ed. 117; Assaria State Bank v. Dolley, 219 U. S. 121, 31 Sup. Ct. 189, 55 L. ed. 123. words of the 14th amendment to a drily logical extreme. Many laws which it would be vain to ask the court to overthrow could be shown, easily enough, to transgress a scholastic interpretation of one or another of the great guarantees in the Bill of Rights. They more or less limit the liberty of the individual, or they diminish property to a certain extent. We have few scientifically certain criteria of legislation, and as it is often difficult to mark the line where what is called the police power of the states is limited by the Constitution of the United States, judges should be slow to read into the latter a nolumus mutare as against the law-making power. "The substance of the plaintiff's argument is that the assessment takes private property for private use without compensation. And while we should assume that the plaintiff would retain a revisionary interest in its contribution to the fund so as to be entitled to a return of what remained of it if the purpose were given up (see Danby Bank v. State Treasurer, 39 Vt. 92, 98), still there is no denying that by this law a portion of its property might be taken without return to pay debts of a failing rival in business. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the logical form of the objection, there are more powerful considerations on the other side. In the first place, it is established by a series of cases that an ulterior public advantage may justify a comparatively insignificant taking of private property for what, in its immediate purpose, is a private use. Clark v. Nash, 198 U. S. 361, 49 L. ed. 1085, 25 Sup. Ct. 676, 4 A. & E. Ann. Cas. 1171; Strickley v. Highland Boy Gold Min. Co., 200 U. S. 527, 531, 50 L. ed. 581, 583, 26 Sup. Ct. 301; 4 A. & E. Ann. Cas. 1174; Olfield v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co., 203 U. S. 372, 51 L ed. 231, 27 Sup. Ct. 72; Bacon v. Walker, 204 U. 51 L. ed. 499, 501, 27 Sup. Ct. 289. And in the next, it would seem that there may be other cases be S. 311, 315, |