The granting of the corporation is but making the trust perpetual, and does not alter the nature of the charity.  The very object sought in obtaining such charter, and in giving property to such a corporation, is to make and keep it private property, and to clothe it with all the security and inviolability of private property.  The intent is, that there shall be a legal private ownership, and that the legal owners shall maintain and protect the property, for the benefit of those for whose use it was designed.  Who ever endowed the public?  Who ever appointed a legislature to administer his charity?  Or who ever heard, before, that a gift to a college, or a hospital, or an asylum, was, in reality, nothing but a gift to the State?

The State of Vermont is a principal donor to Dartmouth College.  The lands given lie in that State.  This appears in the special verdict.  Is Vermont to be considered as having intended a gift to the State of New Hampshire in this case, as, it has been said, is to be the reasonable construction of all donations to the college?  The legislature of New Hampshire affects to represent the public, and therefore claims a right to control all property destined to public use.  What hinders Vermont from considering herself equally the representative of the public, and from resuming her grants, at her own pleasure?  Her right to do so is less doubtful than the power of New Hampshire to pass the laws in question.

In University v.  Foy,[33] the Supreme Court of North Carolina pronounced unconstitutional and void a law repealing a grant to the University of North Carolina, although that university was originally erected and endowed by a statute of the State.  That case was a grant of lands, and the court decided that it could not be resumed.  This is the grant of a power and capacity to hold lands.  Where is the difference of the cases, upon principle?

In Terrett v.  Taylor,[34] this court decided that a legislative grant or confirmation of lands, for the purposes of moral and religious instruction, could no more be rescinded than other grants.  The nature of the use was not holden to make any difference.  A grant to a parish or church, for the purposes which have been mentioned, cannot be distinguished, in respect to the title it confers, from a grant to a college for the promotion of piety and learning.  To the same purpose may be cited the case of Pawlett v.  Clark.  The State of Vermont, by statute, in 1794, granted to the respective towns in that State certain glebe lands lying within those towns for the sole use and support of religious worship.  In 1799, an act was passed to repeal the act of 1794; but this court declared, that the act of 1794, “so far as it granted the glebes to the towns, could not afterwards be repealed by the legislature, so as to divest the rights of the towns under the grant."[35]