Section 92. Owing to the importance of public parks, especially in populous cities, for the promotion of the health, convenience and comfort of the inhabitants thereof, municipalities have been empowered to acquire and hold land for such purposes, and to secure the establishment of such public places, the sovereign power of eminent domain has been conferred on municipal corporations for the purpose of condemning property for the public use in parks.

There exists some divergence of opinion among the authorities as to whether the State legislature can compel a municipal corporation to acquire land for public parks, on the ground of the public health. In People vs. Detroit, 28 Mich., 228, the case arose under a statute relating to a public park for the city of Detroit, which created a Board of Park Commissioners for the city, the act naming the commissioners and investing them with power to acquire by purchase the necessary lands, at a cost not exceeding $300,000, and imperatively requiring the city council, without its assent to the appointment of the commissioners or to the purchase of the lands by them selected, to provide the money to pay therefor by the issue and sale of the bonds of the city, and the court, in a very able opinion, held, that the city could not be compelled, against the will of the council, to issue its bonds; and the decision was based on the ground that a park was purely a matter of local, as distinguished from state concern, and that the legislature was without power to compel or coerce a municipal corporation to contract a debt for local purposes without its consent.

In the Detroit Park Case, supra, the court said: "It is a fundamental principle in this State, recognized and perpetuated by express provision of the constitution, that the people of every hamlet, town, and city of the State are entitled to the benefits of local self-government. But authority in the legislature to determine what shall be the extent of the capacity in a city to acquire and hold property is not equivalent to and does not contain within itself authority to deprive the city of property actually acquired by legislative permission. As to property it thus holds, for its own private purposes, a city is to be regarded as a constituent in State government, and is entitled to the like protection in its property rights as any natural person who is also a constituent. The right of the State is a right of regulation, not of appropriation.

"It cannot be deprived of such property without due process of law. And when a local convenience or need is to be supplied in which the people of the State at large, or any portion thereof outside the city limits, are not concerned, the State can no more by process of taxation take from the individual citizens the money to purchase it, than they could, if it had been procured, appropriate it to the State use.....

From the very dawn of our liberties the principle most unquestionably of all has been this: that the people shall vote the taxes they are to pay, or be permitted to choose representatives for the purpose."