ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 65 



be held adversely in another. What should be said of your ownership in the 

 farm you occupy and till, if some stranger might dictate what crops you 

 should raise, and fix the price at which they might be sold ? You would re- 

 fuse to pay taxes on land held by such a title. And yet this is precisely what 

 you propose for the roads, when by legislative interference or otherwise, and 

 against the will of their owners, you assume to fix tariffs, arrange schedules, 

 and establish laws for their guidance and control. Let us look a little more 

 closely at this. 



The thing we call a " charter " is as much a law as anything the legislature 

 is competent to enact, and when accepted constitutes the contract under 

 which the road is built. When this contract is signed, or this charter ac- 

 cepted, which is the same thing, the right of the respective parties becomes 

 fixed and determinate, and thenceforth neither party can change nor modify 

 any of its provisions without consent of the other— that is, without a new 

 agreement. If this be so while yet the contracts remain executory, how 

 much stronger is the reason why it may not be changed after the contract 

 has been performed by the other party. To do this is to violate the contract, 

 and sugar-coat the pill with any sweet name you may select, the medicine is 

 repudiation ; and it makes the matter rather worse than better that the party 

 avoiding the contract is a sovereign state instead of a private individual. 



There is yet another defense sometimes made to the policy I decry. Man 

 is fruitful in argument always, and there never will be a short crop of talk 

 so long as one man by argument may hope to obtain another man's money. 

 The defense to which I now allude may be called the defense of legality. 



'' The law so reads, and the courts so decide," is the burden of their speech 

 if not their song, and has been since the deed on Calvary— done according to 

 the law. If I remember rightly, it was to the law that Shylock appealed for 

 his pound of flesh— and appealed successfully, until he bit off more than he 

 could conveniently swallow. It was the law that strangled witches, and it 

 was the law that, under the colorless pretense of color, held the blacks in 

 bondage on our own soil ; and it is the law that, under the specious pretense 

 of control, now plans a theft of the railroads, and proposes to turn over their 

 beneficial use and enjoyment to any and everybody but the owner. 



But this defence of legality is faulty in another regard. The law to which 

 you now appeal was not the law under which the charter was granted and 

 the road built. Had it been, the road would never have been built, and you 

 would be still hauling your grain in a cart, and going to market on a stone 

 boat. 



The law to which you appeal was an afterthought, and enacted to give 

 you something you did not before have. Men do not go a gunning for game 

 already in their larder, nor appeal to a legislature for that which they already 

 have by charter ; and if by legislative intervention they gain an advantage 

 they did not before possess, they gain it at the cost of him from whom the 

 advantage proceeds. And if in this case something is obtained beyond the 

 rights reserved by the charter, it is gained at the expense of the other party, 

 i. e., at the expense of the railroad company, and no amount of special plead- 

 ing can overslaugh the plain logic of the facts. 



There might be a show of fairness in a proposal to purchase the roads and 

 operate them by the state for the general good, but state control of property 



