LECTURE VIII. lege v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518. Dartmouth College existed as a corporation Dartmouth Col- under a charter granted by the British Crown to its trustees in New Hampshire, in the year 1769. This charter conferred upon them the entire governing power of the college, and among other powers that of filling up all vacancies occurring in their own body, and of removing and appointing tutors. It also declared that the number of trustees should forever consist of twelve, and no more. After the Revolution, the Legislature of New Hampshire passed a law to amend the charter, to improve and enlarge the corporation. It increased the number of trustees to twenty-one, gave the appointment of the additional members to the Executive of the State, and created a board of overseers to consist of twenty-five persons, of whom twenty-one were also to be appointed by the Executive of New Hampshire. These overseers had power to inspect and control the most important acts of the trustees. The Supreme Court, reversing the decision of the Superior Court of New Hampshire, held that the original charter constituted a contract between the Crown, in whom the power was then vested, and the trustees of the college, which was impaired by the act of the Legislature above referred to. The opinion, to which there was but one dissent, establishes the doctrine that the act of a government, whether it be by a charter of the Legislature or of the Crown, which creates a corporation, is a contract between the State and the corporation, and that all the essential lege v. Woodward, franchises, powers, and benefits conferred upon LECTURE VIII. the corporation by the charter become, when Dartmouth Colaccepted by it, contracts, within the meaning of 4 Wheat. 518. the clause of the Constitution referred to. I cannot here go into the great argument by which this proposition was supported, nor enter into a minute statement of the class of subjects which by the rulings of this case became contracts protected by the Constitution. The opinion has been of late years much criticised, as including with the class of contracts whose foundation is in the legislative action of the States, many which were not probably intended to be so included by the framers of the Constitution. And it is undoubtedly true that the Supreme Court itself has been compelled of late years to insist in this class of cases upon the existence of an actual contract by the State with the corporation, when relief is sought against subsequent legislation. The main feature of the case, namely, that a Statutory conState can make a contract by legislation, as well tracts. as in any other way, and that in no such case shall a subsequent act of the Legislature interpose any effectual barrier to its enforcement, where it is enforceable in the ordinary courts of justice, has remained. The result of this principle has been to make void innumerable acts of State legislatures, intended in times of disastrous financial depression and suffering, to protect the people from the hardships of a rigid and prompt enforcement of the law in regard to their contracts, and to prevent the States from LECTURE VIII. repealing, abrogating, or avoiding by legislation contracts entered into with other parties. Statutory con tracts. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1. Regulation of commerce. This decision has stood from the day it was made to the present hour as a great bulwark against popular effort through State legislation to evade the payment of just debts, the performance of obligatory contracts, and the general repudiation of the rights of creditors. I cannot even refer here to the numerous decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States, of the subordinate courts of the Government, and the highest courts of the States themselves, in which, under the influence of this decision, the principle of the Constitution that no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts has been upheld for the protection of those contracts. With the case of Gibbons v. Ogden,1 which has always been considered a leading one, commenced a series of decisions which has continued down to the term of the court just ended, construing the third clause of section 8, Article I, of the Constitution of the United States. language of this clause is that "Congress shall have power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes." The There has not been, during the history of the Government, any serious question or difficulty about the exercise of the power by Congress to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes. The 19 Wheat. 1. commerce. few laws which that body has found it necessary LECTURE VIII. to pass in regard to trade and intercourse with Regulation of the Indians have given rise to very few controversies before the courts. The power to regulate commerce with foreign nations has necessarily occupied the attention of the legislative body, and the questions arising under it have principally been as to the construction of the statutes, with an occasional contest as to the power to regulate immigration into the various States from foreign countries. But, as regards the regulation of commerce among the States, Congress has signally failed. in providing any general system, or in enacting any very important laws upon the subject. In point of fact, the commerce in existence which could be regulated with any profit, or called for it at the time the Constitution was formed, was that upon the ocean, carried on by sailing vessels, and it was not until the origin of the steamboat, making the great rivers of the country equal in carrying capacity to seas, with the superadded power of steam to make them useful, that interstate commerce became a matter of much consequence. Afterwards the invention of railroads increased the magnitude of this kind of traffic, so that in relative importance to foreign commerce it is now so much superior that I dare not, without consulting the statistics, undertake to state what it is. Very soon after the introduction of the steamboat, whose use was accompanied by great dangers in the navigation of the interior rivers of Regulation of commerce. LECTURE VIII. the country, Congress began to legislate upon the subject, and finally established, some forty or fifty years ago, a system of laws regulating their construction and navigation. The various acts passed from time to time also required that the masters and pilots of these vessels should be regularly examined as to their qualifications and licensed by officers appointed by the General Government. They also prescribed with great minuteness what safeguards they should keep on board in the way of life-saving implements and small boats, and limited the number of passengers, thus taking special care of their comfort and safety. But in relation to railroads, whose owners were corporations under charters from the different States of the Union, such legislation as was needful has been left by Congress to the States who chartered them, or through whose territory they extended. This inaction of the Congress of the United States, which it was asserted could alone establish regulations for the control of railroads in conducting transportation of persons and property through more States than one, thus coming within the definition of the phrase "interstate commerce," has at length been superseded by a very important statute, called the Interstate Commerce Law, passed at the recent session. These railroad corporations, the necessity and value of which to meet the wants of this great country grew so rapidly, asserted for a long time that by virtue of the charters granted |