hat may properly be
done within the authority of different States, in aid of public or
private drainage enterprises. The State Legislatures are not, like
Parliament, omnipotent. They are limited by their written constitutions.
Perhaps no better criterion of power, with respect to compelling
contribution, by persons benefitted, to the cost of drainage, and with
interfering with individual rights, for public or private advantage, can
be found, than the exercise of power in the cases of fences and of
flowage.

If we may lawfully compel a person to fence his land, to exclude the
cattle of other persons, or, if he neglect to fence, subject him to
their depredations, without indemnity, as is done in many States; or if
we may compel him to contribute to the erection of division fences, of a
given height, though he has no animal in the world to be shut in or out
of his field, there would seem to be equal reason, in compelling him to
dig half a division ditch for the benefit of himself and neighbor.

If, again, as we have already hinted, the Legislature may authorize a
corporation to flow and inundate the land of an unwilling citizen, to
raise a water-power for a cotton-mill, it must be a nice discrimination
of powers, that prohibits the same Legislature from authorizing the
entry into lands of a protesting mill-owner, or of an unknown or
cross-grained proprietor, to open an outlet for a valuable,
health-giving system of drainage.

In the valuable treatise of Dr. Warder, of Cincinnati, recently
published in New York, upon Hedges and Evergreens, an abstract is given
of the statutes of most of our States, upon the subject of fences, and
we know of no other book, in which so good an idea of the legislation on
this subject, can be so readily obtained.

By the statutes of Massachusetts, any person may erect and maintain a
water-mill, and dam to raise water for working it, upon and across any
stream that is not navigable, provided he does not interfere with
existing mills. Any person whose land is overflowed, may, on complaint,
have a trial and a verdict of a jury; which may fix the height of the
dam, decide whether it shall be left open any part of the year, and fix
compensation, either annual or in gross, for the injury. All other
remedies for such flowage are taken away, and thus the land of the owner
may be converted into a mill-pond against his consent.

We find nothing in the Massachusetts statutes which gives to
land-owne