The facts were, said Webster, that Wheelock had founded a private charity; that, to perpetuate this, the charter created a corporation by the name of "The Trustees of Dartmouth College," with the powers, privileges, immunities, and limitations set forth in the charter. That instrument provided for no public funds, but only for the perpetuation and convenient management of the private charity. For nearly half a century the College "thus created had existed, uninterruptedly, and usefully." Then its happy and prosperous career was broken by the rude and despoiling hands of the Legislature of the State which the College had so blessed by the education of New Hampshire youth.
What has the Legislature done to the College? It has created a new corporation and transferred to it "all the property, rights, powers, liberties and privileges of the old corporation." The spirit and the letter of the charter were wholly changed by the College Acts.[686] Moreover, the old Trustees "are to be punished" for not accepting these revolutionary laws. A single fact reveals the confiscatory nature of these statutes: Under the charter the president, professors, and tutors of the College had a right to their places and salaries, "subject to the twelve trustees alone"; the College Acts change all this and make the faculty "accountable to new masters."
If the Legislature can make such alterations, it can abolish the charter "rights and privileges altogether." In short, if this legislation is sustained, the old Trustees "have no rights, liberties, franchises, property or privileges, which the legislature may not revoke, annul, alienate or transfer to others whenever it sees fit." Such acts are against "common right" as well as violations of the State and National Constitutions.[687]
Although, says Webster, nothing is before the court but the single question of the violation of the National Constitution, he will compare the New Hampshire laws with "fundamental principles" in order that the court may see "their true nature and character." Regardless of written constitutions, "these acts are not the exercise of a power properly legislative." They take away "vested rights"; but this involves a "forfeiture ... to ... declare which is the proper province of the judiciary."[688] Dartmouth College is not a civil but "an eleemosynary corporation," a "private charity"; and, as such, not subject to the control of public authorities.[689] Does Dartmouth College stand alone in this respect? No! Practically all American institutions of learning have been "established ... by incorporating governours, or trustees.... All such corporations are ... in the strictest legal sense a private charity." Even Harvard has not "any surer title than Dartmouth College. It may, to-day, have more friends; but to-morrow it may have more enemies. Its legal rights are the same. So also of Yale College; and indeed of all others."[690]
From the time of Magna Charta the privilege of being a member of such eleemosynary corporations "has been the object of legal protection." To contend that this privilege may be "taken away," because the Trustees derive no "pecuniary benefit" from it, is "an extremely narrow view." As well say that if the charter had provided that each Trustee should be given a "commission on the disbursement of the funds," his status and the nature of the corporation would have been changed from public to private. Are the rights of the Trustees any the less sacred "because they have undertaken to administer it [the trust] gratuitously?... As if the law regarded no rights but the rights of money, and of visible tangible property!"[691]
The doctrine that all property "of which the use may be beneficial to the publick, belongs therefore to the publick," is without principle or precedent. In this very matter of Dartmouth College, Wheelock might well have "conveyed his property to trustees, for precisely such uses as are described in this charter"—yet nobody would contend that any Legislature could overthrow such a private act. "Who ever appointed a legislature to administer his charity? Or who ever heard, before, that a gift to a college, or hospital, or an asylum, was, in reality, nothing but a gift to the state?"[692]
Vermont has given lands to the College; was this a gift to New Hampshire? "What hinders Vermont ... from resuming her grants," upon the ground that she, equally with New Hampshire, is "the representative of the publick?" In 1794, Vermont had "granted to the respective towns in that state, certain glebe lands lying within those towns for the sole use and support of religious worship." Five years later, the Legislature of that State repealed this grant; "but this court declared[693] that the act of 1794, 'so far as it granted the glebes to the towns, could not afterwards be repealed by the legislature, so as to divest the rights of the towns under the grant.'"[694]
So with the Trustees of Dartmouth College. The property entrusted to them was "private property"; and the right to "administer the funds, and ... govern the college was a franchise and privilege, solemnly granted to them," which no Legislature can annul. "The use being publick in no way diminishes their legal estate in the property, or their title to the franchise." Since "the acts in question violate property, ... take away privileges, immunities, and franchises, ... deny to the trustees the protection of the law," and "are retrospective in their operation," they are, in all respects, "against the constitution of New Hampshire."[695]
It will be perceived by now that Webster relied chiefly on abstract justice. His main point was that, if chartered rights could be interfered with at all, such action was inherently beyond the power of the Legislature, and belonged exclusively to the Judiciary. In this Webster was rigidly following Smith and Mason, neither of whom depended on the violation of the contract clause of the National Constitution any more than did Webster.
Well did Webster know that the Supreme Court of the United States could not consider the violation of a State constitution by a State law. He merely indulged in a device of argument to bring before Marshall and the Associate Justices those "fundamental principles," old as Magna Charta, and embalmed in the State Constitution, which protect private property from confiscation.[696] Toward the close of his argument, Webster discusses the infraction of the National Constitution by the New Hampshire College Acts, a violation the charge of which alone gave the Supreme Court jurisdiction over the case.