In that case, the court held:
Neither in our Constitution, nor in the constitutions of other States of the Union, is there any express provision forbidding the Legislature to pass laws whereby the private property of one citizen may be taken and transferred to another for his private use. As has been well said by Green, J., in Varner v. Martin, 21 West. Va. 548: “It was doubtless regarded as unnecessary to insert such a provision in the Constitution or bill of rights, as the exercise of such an arbitrary power of transferring by legislation the property of one person to another, without his consent, was contrary to the fundamental principles of every republican government; and in a republican government neither the legislative, executive, nor judicial department can possess unlimited power.” In that case it is further said that there is an entire concurrence of all the authorities in the proposition, that private property cannot be taken for private use, either with or without compensation.
Fallsburg, &c. Co. v. Alexander, 101 Va. 98, 101-102, 43 S.E. 194, ___ (1902)
Thanks very much! For some reason it hadn't occurred to me that a court might have originated the limitation, even though that is what happened in Michigan.
Missouri Constitution (as ratified in 1876 and still valid today)
Bill of Rights, Article 1, Section 28
That private property shall not be taken for private use with or without compensation, unless by consent of the owner, except for private ways of necessity, and except for drains and ditches across the lands of others for agricultural and sanitary purposes, in the manner prescribed by law; and that when an attempt is made to take private property for a use alleged to be public, the question whether the contemplated use be public shall be judicially determined without regard to any legislative declaration that the use is public.
So I do not think the author of Fallsburg was accurate in their remark.