It is not too much to assert, that the legislature of New Hampshire would not have been competent to pass the acts in question, and to make them binding on the plaintiffs without their assent, even if there had been, in the Constitution of New Hampshire, or of the United States, no special restriction on their power, because these acts are not the exercise of a power properly legislative.[1] Their effect and object are to take away, from one, rights, property, and franchises, and to grant them to another.  This is not the exercise of a legislative power.  To justify the taking away of vested rights there must be a forfeiture, to adjudge upon and declare which is the proper province of the judiciary.  Attainder and confiscation are acts of sovereign power, not acts of legislation.  The British Parliament, among other unlimited powers, claims that of altering and vacating charters; not as an act of ordinary legislation, but of uncontrolled authority.  It is theoretically omnipotent.  Yet, in modern times, it has very rarely attempted the exercise of this power.  In a celebrated instance, those who asserted this power in Parliament vindicated its exercise only in a case in which it could be shown, 1st.  That the charter in question was a charter of political power; 2d.  That there was a great and overruling state necessity, justifying the violation of the charter; 3d.  That the charter had been abused and justly forfeited.[2] The bill affecting this charter did not pass.  Its history is well known.  The act which afterwards did pass, passed with the assent of the corporation.  Even in the worst times, this power of Parliament to repeal and rescind charters has not often been exercised.  The illegal proceedings in the reign of Charles the Second were under color of law.  Judgments of forfeiture were obtained in the courts.  Such was the case of the quo warranto against the city of London, and the proceedings by which the charter of Massachusetts was vacated.

The legislature of New Hampshire has no more power over the rights of the plaintiffs than existed somewhere, in some department of government, before the Revolution.  The British Parliament could not have annulled or revoked this grant as an act of ordinary legislation.  If it had done it at all, it could only have been in virtue of that sovereign power, called omnipotent, which does not belong to any legislature in the United States.  The legislature of New Hampshire has the same power over this charter which belonged to the king who granted it, and no more.  By the law of England, the power to create corporations is a part of the royal prerogative.[3] By the Revolution, this power may be considered as having devolved on the legislature of the State, and it has accordingly been exercised by the legislature.  But the king cannot abolish a corporation, or new-model it, or alter its powers, without its assent.  This is the acknowledged and well-known doctrine of the common law.  “Whatever