rove the contrary.[1657]
Since then the rule has been applied many times in justification of
State regulation of railroads,[1658] and even of the application of a
State prohibition law to a company which had been chartered expressly to
manufacture beer.[1659]

The Strict Construction of Public Grants

Long, however, before the cases last cited were decided, the principle
which they illustrate had come to be powerfully reinforced by two
others, the first of which is that all charter privileges and immunities
are to be strictly construed as against the claims of the State; or as
it is otherwise often phrased, "nothing passes by implication in a
public grant."

The Charles River Bridge Case.--The leading case is that of the
Charles River Bridge Company _v._ Warren Bridge Company,[1660] which was
decided shortly after Chief Justice Marshall's death by a substantially
new Court. The question at issue was whether the charter of the
complaining company, which authorized it to operate a toll bridge, stood
in the way of the State's permitting another company of later date to
operate a free bridge in the immediate vicinity. Inasmuch as the first
company could point to no clause in its charter which specifically
vested it with an exclusive right, the Court held the charter of the
second company to be valid on the principle just stated. Justice Story,
who remained from the old Bench, presented a vigorous dissent, in which
he argued cogently, but unavailingly, that the monopoly claimed by the
Charles River Bridge Company was fully as reasonable an implication from
the terms of its charter and the circumstances surrounding its
concession as perpetuity had been from the terms of the Dartmouth
College charter and the environing transaction.

The Court was in fact making new law, because it was looking at things
from a new point of view. This was the period when judicial recognition
of the Police Power began to take on a doctrinal character. It was also
the period when the railroad business was just beginning. Chief Justice
Taney's opinion evinces the influence of both these developments. The
power of the State to provide for its own internal happiness and
prosperity was not, he asserted, to be pared away by mere legal
intendments; nor was its ability to avail itself of the lights of modern
science to be frustrated by obsolete interests such as those of the old
turnpike companies, the charter privileges of which, he apprehended,