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10 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1895)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry10 and id is 1 raw text is: Volume X.] POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY. MUNICIPAL HOME RULE. NO principle of law is more firmly established than that municipal corporations are the creatures of the legislature, which may enlarge, abridge or entirely withdraw their powers in its own discretion.' With the single exception that municipal property owned by the corporation in its own right may not be taken from it, the legislature has, by common law, absolute power over municipal affairs. While the early constitutions of nearly all the commonwealths contained bills of private rights, municipal corporations were considered as so com- pletely governmental in character that they could not safely be protected against legislative interference, except in so far as such protection was afforded to them as owners of private property. The existence of such a rule of law makes it possible for the legislature to exercise control not only over such of the functions discharged by the city as interest the state as a whole, but also over matters of a purely local and quasi private character. That the legislature has, as a matter of fact, controlled both these fields, needs no demonstration. In some of our commonwealths its attitude has been more worthy of censure than in others; but in all alike it has failed to distinguish between matters of a public character, in which its interference is justified, and matters of a private character, which should belong within the realm of municipal local au- tonomy. 1 Meriwether vs. Garrett, 102 U. S., 472-511 ; Rogers vs. Burlington, 3 Wal- lace, 654. March, 1895. [ Number i.

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