ssary," said he, "to insert a
special provision in the Constitution to enable them (the legislature)
to take private property even for public use, and on compensation made;
but it was not deemed necessary to disable them specially in regard to
taking the property of an individual, with or without compensation, in
order to give it to another, not only because the general provision in
the Bill of Rights was deemed sufficiently explicit for that, but
because it was expected that no legislature would be so regardless of
right as to attempt it. Were this reasonable expectation to be
disappointed, it would become our plain and imperative duty to obey the
immediate and paramount will of the people, expressed by their voices in
the adoption of the Constitution, rather than the repugnant will of
their delegates acting under a restricted but transcended authority."
(Norman _v._ Heist, 5 W. & S. 171.)

Yet, while the right of private property cannot be thus directly
invaded, its security against the acts of the legislature is not as
perfect as it might and ought to be made. The legislature must be
allowed a large discretion in judging what is a public use: on that
pretext much may be brought within its sweep unjustly, and the courts,
in the absence of a constitutional rule, would be embarrassed in
defining its limits. Experience has shown that much power to do wrong
lurks under grants by no means essential to the public good. Besides
what has been before referred to, the assumption of judicial functions
by the Legislature and the broad field of Chancery jurisdiction over
trust estates, which it has been held that they may exercise
immediately, if they see fit, instead of vesting them in appropriate
tribunals, are fraught with serious danger. The proneness of bodies so
constituted to disembarrass themselves of the ordinary rules of
evidence, to act upon _ex parte_ statements and testimony imperfectly
authenticated, as well as the absence of all legal forms from their
proceedings, and their numbers, among whom the responsibility of giving
due attention to the case is divided, add to the peril. The power of
legislating retrospectively has far too wide a scope; the constitutional
inhibition of _ex post facto_ laws having been construed to apply to
criminal or penal cases merely, restraining the legislature from making
that an offence which was not so at the time of its commission, or
increasing the punishment annexed to it. The course