and if he be disturbed in the enjoyment of it, he would have redress, on appealing to the law, as promptly as for any other injury.  If the other trustees should conspire against any one of them to prevent his equal right and voice in the appointment 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 the public might take away the right, or impair it.  This notion appears to be borrowed from no better source than the repudiated doctrine of the three judges in the Aylesbury case.[31] That was an action against a returning officer for refusing the plaintiff’s vote, in the election