not been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States as to the powers of the Federal government.  Under the broad definition given in Idaho and Wyoming, you can probably take land to establish a municipal coal-yard, or dispensary, or anything else that the legislature might suppose to be for the general health or benefit of the people.  Yet a hotel company would not, as yet, be considered a public use, nor, probably, a private recreation park.  And land taken for one use may be subjected to other and totally distinct uses without giving any new right of damages, as was decided in Massachusetts, at least, when land given or taken for an ordinary city street was afterward occupied by a steam railroad.  A notable limitation on the use of streets, however, we find imposed by the statutes of New York and many other States, which provide that no railway shall be placed therein without the consent of a majority of the property owners or abutters.  There is frequent legislation providing that the betterment taxes collected in case of public improvement shall not exceed the damages given for the property actually taken.  In the last two or three years there has been an extension of the doctrine, authorizing cities and towns to take more land than is actually needed, for the purpose of convenience, or in order to get a better bargain, and then sell the surplus; but such laws may be unconstitutional.

Land may, of course, be taken for all municipal purposes, including public squares or parks, playgrounds, reformatories and penal institutions, levees, ditches, drains, and for cemeteries; and the right is being granted to private companies other than those above mentioned, in Colorado, to tunnel, transportation, electric power, and aerial tramway companies; in North Carolina to flume companies; in many States for private irrigation districts; in the West generally to mining or quarrying companies; in West Virginia and other States to electric power, light, or gas companies; while in North Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin, we find the dangerous grant of this great power to electric-power companies, which are, in Wisconsin at least, expressly permitted to flood lands by right of eminent domain in order to form ponds for power purposes.  It is easy to see that under such legislation everybody holds his land not only subject to public need, but to the greed of any designing neighbor.  Perhaps the most important question of eminent domain is or was whether it authorized general schemes of internal improvement made by the State or by a municipality, or, worse still, by a private corporation chartered for the purpose.  The Constitution of Michigan, with those of the Dakotas and Wyoming, provides that the State cannot be interested in works of internal improvement, nor, in North Dakota and Wyoming, engage in them except on two-thirds vote of the people; nor, in Alabama, may it loan its credit in support of such works; nor, also, in Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, create or contract