Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt:... most enlightened sentiment of their constituency, we may safely bid defiance to all other dangers." As to corporate property, there can be no such thing except under legislative act. A corporation can only exist by charter, general or special, and a limitation upon its power to hold property is always provided, a limitation which it cannot exceed if the state sees fit to interfere. If the tremendous doctrine which the eloquence of Webster vindicated, and the learning of Chief Justice Marshall established, in the Dartmouth College case, that a corporate charter is a contract between the corporation and the state, which the state has no power to change, had prevailed in its full scope, and corporations been created under it with the frequency of modern instances, the substance of power in this respect might have passed from the states to the corporations themselves, with their immense aggregations of wealth and influence, wholly removed from governmental control. But comparatively few corporations exist which are not, either by the express terms of their charters or by general provisions of law under which they were established, made subject to the action of the legislature even to the extent of wholly changing or repealing their charters. So far as the corporate character of their accumulations of property is concerned, it is as a rule wholly subject theoretically to the exercise of legislative authority. VVhen we consider further the extent of the power exercised by the legislature in the regulation of the enjoyment of rights of property by what is known as the police power, based upon the principle that all property in the state is held subject to those general regulations which are necessary to the common good and general...