It is admitted that the State, by its courts of law, can enforce the will of the donor, and compel a faithful execution of the trust.  The plaintiffs claim no exemption from legal responsibility.  They hold themselves at all times answerable to the law of the land, for their conduct in the trust committed to them.  They ask only to hold the property of which they are owners, and the franchises which belong to them, until they shall be found, by due course and process of law, to have forfeited them.

It can make no difference whether the legislature exercise the power it has assumed by removing the trustees and the president and professors, directly and by name, or by appointing others to expel them.  The principle is the same, and in point of fact the result has been the same.  If the entire franchise cannot be taken away, neither can it be essentially impaired.  If the trustees are legal owners of the property, they are sole owners.  If they are visitors, they are sole visitors.  No one will be found to say, that, if the legislature may do what it has done, it may not do any thing and every thing which it may choose to do, relative to the property of the corporation, and the privileges of its members and officers.

If the view which has been taken of this question be at all correct, this was an eleemosynary corporation, a private charity.  The property was private property.  The trustees were visitors, and the right to hold the charter, administer the funds, and visit and govern the college, was a franchise and privilege, solemnly granted to them.  The use being public in no way diminishes their legal estate in the property, or their title to the franchise.  There is no principle, nor any case, which declares that a gift to such a corporation is a gift to the public.  The acts in question violate property.  They take away privileges, immunities, and franchises.  They deny to the trustees the protection of the law; and they are retrospective in their operation.  In all which respects they are against the constitution of New Hampshire.

The plaintiffs contend, in the second place, that the acts in question are repugnant to the tenth section of the first article of the Constitution of the United States.  The material words of that section are:  “No State shall pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contacts.”

The object of these most important provisions in the national constitution has often been discussed, both here and elsewhere.  It is exhibited with great clearness and force by one of the distinguished persons who framed that instrument.  “Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.  The two former are expressly prohibited by the declarations prefixed to some of the State constitutions, and all of them are prohibited