He felt that the public would not
support him if he held that states could not alter town and county
charters, so he arbitrarily split corporations in halves, protecting
only those which handled exclusively private funds, and abandoning
"instruments of government," as he called them, to the mercy of
legislative assemblies.
Toward 1832 it became convenient for middle class Englishmen to
confiscate most of the property which the aristocracy had invested in
parliamentary boroughs, and this social revolution was effected without
straining the judicial system, because of the supremacy of Parliament.
In America, at about the same time, it became, in like manner,
convenient to confiscate numerous equally well-vested rights, because,
to have compensated the owners would have entailed a considerable
sacrifice which neither the public nor the promoters of new enterprises
were willing to make. The same end was reached in America as in England,
in spite of Chief Justice Marshall and the Dartmouth College Case, only
in America it was attained by a legal somerset which has disordered the
course of justice ever since.
Pages:
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99