ent of a
president or professor, or in the passing of any statute or ordinance of
the college, he would be entitled to his action, for depriving him of
his franchise. It makes no difference, that this property is to be
holden and administered, and these franchises exercised, for the purpose
of diffusing learning. No principle and no case establishes any such
distinction. The public may be benefited by the use of this property.
But this does not change the nature of the property, or the rights of
the owners. The object of the charter may be public good; so it is in
all other corporations; and this would as well justify the resumption or
violation of the grant in any other case as in this. In the case of an
advowson, the use is public, and the right cannot be turned to any
private benefit or emolument. It is nevertheless a legal private right,
and the _property_ of the owner, as emphatically as his freehold. The
rights and privileges of trustees, visitors, or governors of
incorporated colleges, stand on the same foundation. They are so
considered, both by Lord Holt and Lord Hardwicke.[30]

To contend that the rights of the plaintiffs may be taken away, because
they derive from them no pecuniary benefit or private emolument, or
because they cannot be transmitted to their heirs, or would not be
assets to pay their debts, is taking an extremely narrow view of the
subject. According to this notion, the case would be different, if, in
the charter, they had stipulated for a commission on the disbursement
of the funds; and they have ceased to have any interest in the
property, because they have undertaken to administer it gratuitously.

It cannot be necessary to say much in refutation of the idea, that there
cannot be a legal interest, or ownership, in any thing which does not
yield a pecuniary profit; as if the law regarded no rights but the
rights of money, and of visible, tangible property. Of what nature are
all rights of suffrage? No elector has a particular personal interest;
but each has a legal right, to be exercised at his own discretion, and
it cannot be taken away from him. The exercise of this right directly
and very materially affects the public; much more so than the exercise
of the privileges of a trustee of this college. Consequences of the
utmost magnitude may sometimes depend on the exercise of the right of
suffrage by one or a few electors. Nobody was ever yet heard to contend,
however, that on that account t