Speech of James Madison Porter ...: In the Convention of Pennsylvania, on the Subject of the Right to Annul Charters of Incorporation, Delivered November 20, 1837

封面
Peter Hay & Company, printers, 1837 - 59 頁
 

已選取的頁面

其他版本 - 查看全部

常見字詞

熱門章節

第 18 頁 - It is chiefly for the purpose of clothing bodies of men, in succession, with these qualities and capacities, that corporations were invented, and are in use. By these means a perpetual succession of individuals are capable of acting for the promotion of the particular object, like one immortal being.
第 29 頁 - We admit, as all must admit, that the powers of the government are limited, and that its limits are not to be transcended. But we think the sound construction of the constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion, with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution...
第 35 頁 - It may well be doubted whether the nature of society and of government does not prescribe some limits to the legislative power; and, if any be prescribed, where are they to be found if the property of an individual, fairly and honestly acquired, may be seized without compensation...
第 37 頁 - It is, then, the unanimous opinion of the court, that, in this case, the estate having passed into the hands of a purchaser for a valuable consideration, without notice, the state of Georgia was restrained, either by general principles, which are common to our free institutions, or by the particular provisions of the constitution of the United States...
第 36 頁 - If, under a fair construction of the Constitution, grants are comprehended under the term contracts, is a grant from the State excluded from the operation of the provision ? Is the clause to be considered as inhibiting the State from impairing the obligation of contracts between two individuals, but as excluding from that inhibition contracts made with itself? The words themselves contain no such distinction. They are general, and are applicable to contracts of every description.
第 37 頁 - I do not hesitate to declare that a state does not possess the power of revoking its own grants. But I do it on a general principle, on the reason and nature of things : a principle which will impose laws even on the Deity.
第 34 頁 - In this case the legislature may have had ample proof that the original grant was obtained by practices which can never be too much reprobated, and which would have justified its abrogation so far as respected those to whom crime was imputable. But the grant, when issued, conveyed an estate in fee-simple to the grantee, clothed with all the solemnities which law can bestow. This estate was transferable ; and those who purchased parts of it were not stained by that guilt which infected the original...
第 36 頁 - Whatever respect might have been foil for the state sovereignties, it is not to be disguised that the framers of the constitution viewed with some apprehension, the violent acts which might grow out of the feelings of the moment; and that the people of the United States, in adopting that instrument, have manifested a determination to shield themselves and their property from the effects of those sudden and strong passions to which men are exposed.
第 29 頁 - A constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would probably never be understood by the public.
第 36 頁 - Such a law may inflict penalties on the person, or may inflict pecuniary penalties which swell the public treasury. The legislature is, then, prohibited from passing a law by which a man's estate, or any part of it. shall be seized for a crime which was not declared by some previous law to render him liable to that punishment.

書目資訊