o 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