Section 88. As the municipality is a mere agent of the State, the legislature can direct the manner in which it shall control the streets within its limits. The property rights and easements which the municipality has in public streets and ways, are held by it at the will of the legislature.

Of course, this statement is subject to the further statement, that such property, as the municipality holds in its private capacity, is as much protected by the constitution as the property of the private citizen.3

In the case of People vs. Kerr, 27 N. Y., 188, the court said: "So far as the existing public rights in these streets are concerned, such as the right of passage and travel over them as common highways, a little reflection will show that the legislature has supreme control over them. When no private interests are involved or invaded, the legislature may close a highway and relinquish altogether its use by the public, or it may regulate such use or restrict it to peculiar vehicles, or to the use of particular motive power. It may change one kind of use into another, so long as the property continues devoted to public use. What belongs to the public may be controlled and disposed of in any way which the public agent sees fit."

3 Cicero Lumber Co. vs. Town of Cicero, 176 III., 9: Simon vs.

Northup, 27 Or., 487; Baird vs. Rice, 63 Pa., 489.

It is said by Judge Dillon, in his work on Municipal Corporations (4th ed.), Sec. 657: "As respects the public or municipalities, there is, in the absence of special constitutional restriction, no limit upon the power of the legislature as to the uses to which streets may be devoted."