is holden for certain trusts. The legal
estate is still theirs. They have a right in the property, and they
have a right of visiting and superintending the trust; and this is an
object of legal protection, as much as any other right. The charter
declares that the powers conferred on the trustees are "privileges,
advantages, liberties, and immunities"; and that they shall be for ever
holden by them and their successors. The New Hampshire Bill of Rights
declares that no one shall be deprived of his "property, privileges, or
immunities," but by judgment of his peers, or the law of the land. The
argument on the other side is, that, although these terms may mean
something in the Bill of Rights, they mean nothing in this charter. But
they are terms of legal signification, and very properly used in the
charter. They are equivalent with _franchises_. Blackstone says that
_franchise_ and _liberty_ are used as synonymous terms. And after
enumerating other liberties and franchises, he says: "It is likewise a
franchise for a number of persons to be incorporated and subsist as a
body politic, with a power to maintain perpetual succession and do other
corporate acts; and each individual member of such a corporation is also
said to have a franchise or freedom."[28]

_Liberties_ is the term used in Magna Charta as including franchises,
privileges, immunities, and all the rights which belong to that class.
Professor Sullivan says, the term signifies the "_privileges_ that some
of the subjects, whether single persons or bodies corporate, have above
others by the lawful grant of the king; as the chattels of felons or
outlaws, and the lands _and privileges of corporations_."[29]

The privilege, then, of being a member of a corporation, under a lawful
grant, and of exercising the rights and powers of such member, is such a
privilege, _liberty_, or _franchise_, as has been the object of legal
protection, and the subject of a legal interest, from the time of Magna
Charta to the present moment. The plaintiffs have such an interest in
this corporation, individually, as they could assert and maintain in a
court of law, not as agents of the public, but in their own right. Each
trustee has a _franchise_, and if he be disturbed in the enjoyment of
it, he would have redress, on appealing to the law, as promptly as for
any other injury. If the other trustees should conspire against any one
of them to prevent his equal right and voice in the appointm