tween personal destitution and the
public interest. He dares not employ methods of resistance that would
subject him to the risk of forfeiting the right to compensation. He may
resist by fair means, but if he is intelligent, he will keep his skirts
clear of foul. If his establishment is closed, he is not left, a ruined
and desperate man, to project methods for carrying on his trade illicitly.
On the contrary, the act of compensation has placed in his hands funds in
which he might be mulcted if convicted of violation of the law. And if
natural perversity should drive him to illegal practices, he would not
find himself an object of sympathy on the part of that considerable
minority that resent injustice even to those whom they regard as
evil-doers.

There can be little doubt that by the adoption of the principle of
adequate compensation, an American commonwealth could extinguish any
property interest that majority opinion pronounces anti-social. We may
have industries that menace the public health. Under existing conditions
the interests involved exert themselves to the utmost to suppress
information relative to the dangers of such industries. With the principle
of compensation in operation, these very interests would be the foremost
in exposing the evils in question. It is no hardship to sell your interest
to the public. Does any one feel aggrieved when the public decides to
appropriate his land to a public use? On the contrary, every possessor of
a site at all suited for a public building or playground does everything
in his power to display its advantages in the most favorable light.

And with this we have admitted a disadvantage of the compensation
principle--over-compensation. We do pay excessively for property rights
extinguished in the public interest. But this is largely because the
principle is employed with such relative infrequency that we have not as
yet developed a technique of compensation. German cities have learned how
to acquire property for public use without either plundering the private
owner or excessively enriching him. The British application of the Small
Holdings Acts has duly protected the interests of the large landholder,
without making of him a vociferous champion of the Acts.

Progressive public morality readers one private interest after another
indefensible. Let the public extinguish such interests, by all means. But
let the public be moral at its own expense.

A revolting doctrine, it wi