If, either as a corporation or as individuals, they have any legal rights,
this forcible intrusion of others violates those rights, as manifestly as
an entire and complete ouster and dispossession. These acts alter the
whole constitution of the corporation. They affect the rights of the whole
body as a corporation, and the rights of the individuals who compose it.
They revoke corporate powers and franchises. They alienate and transfer
the property of the college to others. By the charter, the trustees had a
right to fill vacancies in their own number. This is now taken away. They
were to consist of twelve, and, by express provision, of no more. This is
altered. They and their successors, appointed by themselves, were for ever
to hold the property. The legislature has found successors for them,
before their seats are vacant. The powers and privileges which the twelve
were to exercise exclusively, are now to be exercised by others. By one of
the acts, they are subjected to heavy penalties if they exercise their
offices, or any of those powers and privileges granted them by charter,
and which they had exercised for fifty years. They are to be punished for
not accepting the new grant and taking its benefits. This, it must be
confessed, is rather a summary mode of settling a question of
constitutional right. Not only are new trustees forced into the
corporation, but new trusts and uses are created. The college is turned
into a university. Power is given to create new colleges, and, to
authorize any diversion of the funds which may be agreeable to the new
boards, sufficient latitude is given by the undefined power of
establishing an institute. To these new colleges, and this institute, the
funds contributed by the founder, Dr. Wheelock, and by the original
donors, the Earl of Dartmouth and others, are to be applied, in plain and
manifest disregard of the uses to which they were given.

The president, one of the old trustees, had a right to his office, salary,