it has any meaning, it
is that the legislature shall pass no act directly and manifestly
impairing private property and private privileges. It shall not judge by
act. It shall not decide by act. It shall not deprive by act. But it
shall leave all these things to be tried and adjudged by the law of the
land.

The fifteenth article has been referred to before. It declares that no
one shall be "deprived of his property, immunities, or privileges, but
by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land." Notwithstanding
the light in which the learned judges in New Hampshire viewed the rights
of the plaintiffs under the charter, and which has been before adverted
to, it is found to be admitted in their opinion, that those rights are
privileges within the meaning of this fifteenth article of the Bill of
Rights. Having quoted that article, they say: "That the right to manage
the affairs of this college is a privilege, within the meaning of this
clause of the Bill of Rights, is not to be doubted." In my humble
opinion, this surrenders the point. To resist the effect of this
admission, however, the learned judges add: "But how a privilege can be
protected from the operation of the law of the land by a clause in the
constitution, declaring that it shall not be taken away but by the law
of the land, is not very easily understood." This answer goes on the
ground, that the acts in question are laws of the land, within the
meaning of the constitution. If they be so, the argument drawn from this
article is fully answered. If they be not so, it being admitted that the
plaintiffs' rights are "privileges," within the meaning of the article,
the argument is not answered, and the article is infringed by the acts.

Are, then, these acts of the legislature, which affect only particular
persons and their particular privileges, laws of the land? Let this
question be answered by the text of Blackstone. "And first it (i.e. law)
is a _rule_: not a transient, sudden order from a superior to or
concerning a particular person; but something permanent, uniform, and
universal. Therefore a particular act of the legislature to confiscate
the goods of Titius, or to attaint him of high treason, does not enter
into the idea of a municipal law; for the operation of this act is spent
upon Titius only, and has no relation to the community in general; it is
rather a sentence than a law."[45] Lord Coke is equally decisive and
emphatic. Citing and commenting on