(g) Terrett v. Taylor, supra: Town of Pawlet v Clark, 9 Cranch. 292; Dart-month College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 518; Bailey v. The Mayor of New York, 3 Hill, 531*; Hazen v. The Union Bank of Tennessee, 1 Sneed, 115; Fort Plain, etc. Co. v. Smith, 3 N. Y. 44; Downing v. Indiana State Board, 129 Ind. 443.

(A) In Benson v. The Mayor, etc. of New York, 10 Barb. 223, it was held, that ferry franchises may be held by a municipal corporation, without losing their character as private property, and, when accepted and acted upon, they cannot be resumed by the State; but that the State is not excluded from legislation touching them, so far as they are publici juris, and may pass laws to secure the safety of passengers and protect them from imposition, etc. In East Hartford v. Hartford Bridge Co. 10 How. 511; s. c. 17 Conn. 79, the reasoning of Woodbury, J., delivering the opinion of the court, indicates the opinion that ferry franchises, when granted to municipal corporations, are public privileges, in the nature rather of public laws than of contracts, to be modified or abolished by the legislature, as the public interests demand; but the circumstances of the case did not call for the opinion, as in that case the ferry right was in express terms to be held during the pleasure of the General Assembly.

1 A legislature, in uniting two municipalities, may provide for the sharing and adjusting of their respective properties and debts, without impairing the obligation of contracts. Stone v. Charlestown, 114 Mass. 214. See Rawson v. Spencer, 113 Mass. 40. - K.

Many interesting cases have arisen under this constitutional provision, as our notes show. Nor does the difficulty of construing this clause appear to lessen. Thus, in a recent case, where

(i) Warner v. The People, 2 Denio, 272, Conner v. The City of New York, 2 Sandf. 355, I Selden, 285; Knoup v. The Piqua Bank, 1 Ohio State, 616, per Corwin, J.; Toledo Bank r. Bond, id. 656, Commonwealth v. Bacon, 6 S. & R. 322; Commonwealth v Mann, 5 Watts & S. 418; Barker v. Pittsburg, 4 Barr, 51; The West River Bridge Co. v. Dix, 6 How. 548; Butler v. Pennsylvania, 10 id 402 In 1836 the State of Pennsylvania passed a law directing canal commissioners to be appointed annually by the governor, and that their term of office should commence on the first of February in every year. The pay was fixed by the law at four dollars per diem. In April, 1843, certain persons being then in office as commissioners, the legislature passed another law, providing amongst other things that the per diem should be only three dollars; the reduction to take effect upon the passage of the law, and that, in the following October, commissioners should be elected by the people. The commissioners claimed the full allowance during the entire year, upon the ground that the State had no right to pass a law impairing the obligation of a contract. It was held, that there was no contract between the State and the commissioners, within the meaning of the Constitution of the United States. Daniel, J.: "The contracts designed to be protected by the 10th section of the first article of that instrument, are contracts by which perfect rights, certain definite, fired, private rights of property are vested. These are clearly distinguishable from measures or engagements adopted or undertaken by the body politic or State government, for the benefit of all, and from the necessity of the case, and according to the universal understanding, to be varied or discontinued as the public good shall require. The selection of officers who are nothing more than agents for the effectuating of such public purposes, is matter of public convenience or necessity, and so, too, are the periods for the appointment of such agents; but neither the one nor the other of these arrangements can constitute any obligation to continue such agents, or to re-appoint them, after the measures which brought them into being shall have been found useless, shall have been fulfilled, or shall have been abrogated as even detrimental to the well-being of the public. The promised compensation for services actually performed and accepted, during the continuance of the particular agency, may undoubtedly be claimed, both upon principles of compact and of equity; but to insist beyond this on the perpetuation of a public policy either useless or detrimental, and upon a reward for acts neither desired nor performed, would appear to be reconcilable with neither common justice nor common sense. The establishment of such a principle would arrest necessarily everything like progress or improvement in government; or if such changes should be ventured upon, the government would have to become one great pension establishment on which to quarter a host of sinecures. It would especially be difficult, if not impracticable in this view, ever to remodel the organic law of a State, as constitutional ordinances must be of higher authority and more immutable than common legislative enactments, and there could not exist conflicting constitutional ordinances under one and the same system. It follows, then, upon principle, that in every perfect or competent government there must exist a genera] power to enact and to repeal laws; and to create and change, or discontinue, the agents designated for the execution of those laws. Such a power is indispensable for the preservation of the body politic, and for the safety of the individuals of the community. See Allen r Mr Keen, 1 Sumner, 276. See also in Whillington v. Polk, 1 Harris & J. 236; a strange case, in which Luther Martin brought an action, on an assize sur novel disseisin, to maintain the right of a judge to his seat after the court had been destroyed by a statute repealing that under which the judge was appointed.

1 A contract between a State and a person, whereby the latter is to perform certain duties for a specific period at a stipulated compensation, is within the contract clause of the Constitution, and on its completion he is entitled to the compensation agreed upon, although meanwhile the statute pursuant to which the contract was made is repealed. Hall v. Wisconsin, 103 U. S. 5 - K.