Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/495

IN BE TIBUKCIO PARBOTT. 4:b7 �of private individuals -would be inviolable, bave for them no existence. �Tbe circumstances which led to the insertion in charters of incorporation of the reservation in question are well known. �The supreme court having decided that a charter of a liter- ary institution was a contract, and therefore proteeted by the provision in the constitution which forbids the states to make any law impairing the obligation of contracts, the res- ervation clause was introduced in order to withdraw the con- tract from the operation of the constitutional inhibition, and to retain to the autbority which created the corporation the right to resume the granted powers, or to modify tbem, as the public interests might require. �It may confidently be affirmed that it was not intended to autborize the exercise of the unrestrained power over the operations of corporations, and the use of their property, con- tended for at the bar. �The adjudged cases, though they contain no precise defi- nition of the extent and limits of tbis power applicable to ail questions which may arise, are nevertheless full of in- struction on the subject. �In The Sinking Fund Cases, 9 Otto, 720, Mr. Cbief Justice Waite, delivering the opinion of the court, says: "That this power bas a limit, no one can doubt. AU agree that it can- not be used to take away property already acquired under the operation of the charter, or to deprive the corporation of the fruits actually redueed to possession of contracts lawfully made, but, as was said by this court, through Mr. Justice Clifford, in Miller v. The State, 15 Wall. 498, 'it may be safely affirmed that the reserved power may be exercised and to almost any extent to carry into effect the original purposes of the grant, or to secure the due administration of its affairs 80 as to proteet the rights of stockholders and of creditors, and for the proper disposition of the assets;' and again, in Holyoke Company v. Lyman, Id. 519, 'to proteet the rights of the public and of the corporators, or to promote the due administration of the affairs of a corporation.' Mr. Justice ��� �