tate instead of his heir. Little, probably, did
he think, at that time, that the legislature would ever take away this
property and these privileges, and give them to others. Little did he
suppose that this charter secured to him and his successors no legal
rights. Little did the other donors think so. If they had, the college
would have been, what the university is now, a thing upon paper,
existing only in name.

The numerous academies in New England have been established
substantially in the same manner. They hold their property by the same
tenure, and no other. Nor has Harvard College 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 the others. When the legislature gives to
these institutions, it may and does accompany its grants with such
conditions as it pleases. The grant of lands by the legislature of New
Hampshire to Dartmouth College, in 1789, was accompanied with various
conditions. When donations are made, by the legislature or others, to a
charity already existing, without any condition, or the specification of
any new use, the donation follows the nature of the charity. Hence the
doctrine, that all eleemosynary corporations are private bodies. They
are founded by private persons, and on private property. The public
cannot be charitable in these institutions. It is not the money of the
public, but of private persons, which is dispensed. It may be public,
that is general, in its uses and advantages; and the State may very
laudably add contributions of its own to the funds; but it is still
private in the tenure of the property, and in the right of administering
the funds.

If the doctrine laid down by Lord Holt, and the House of Lords, in
_Phillips v. Bury_, and recognized and established in all the other
cases, be correct, the property of this college was private property; it
was vested in the trustees by the charter, and to be administered by
them, according to the will of the founder and donors, as expressed in
the charter. They were also visitors of the charity, in the most ample
sense. They had, therefore, as they contend, privileges, property, and
immunities, within the true meaning of the Bill of Rights. They had
rights, and still have them, which they can assert against the
legislature, as well as against other wrong-doers. It makes no
difference, that the estate