If the doctrine laid down by Lord Holt, and the House of Lords, in Phillips v.  Bury, and recognized and established in all the other cases, be correct, the property of this college was private property; it was vested in the trustees by the charter, and to be administered by them, according to the will of the founder and donors, as expressed in the charter.  They were also visitors of the charity, in the most ample sense.  They had, therefore, as they contend, privileges, property, and immunities, within the true meaning of the Bill of Rights.  They had rights, and still have them, which they can assert against the legislature, as well as against other wrong-doers.  It makes no difference, that the estate 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,