Page:Address of Frederick V. Holman at Oregon Bar Association annual meeting.djvu/18

, and may directly exercise this power, or devolve it upon municipal authorities. (Moses v. Railway Co., 21 111. 516; Murphy v. Chicago, 29 111. 279; Mercer v. Railway Co., 36 Pa. St. 99; Springfield v. Railroad Co., 4 Cush. 63; People v. Kerr, 27 N. Y. 18S; Lackland v. Railroad Co., 31 Mo. 180; City of Clinton v. Railroad Co., supra.)

In Simon v. Northrup, 27 Ogn. 427, Mr. Chief Justice Bean said (pages 501, 502):

"The law is too well settled to be questioned that the public highways of a city are not the private property of the municipality, but are for the use of the general public, and that, as the Legislature is the representative of the public at large, it has, in the absence of any Constitutional restriction, paramount authority over such ways, and may grant the use or supervision and control thereof to some other governmental agency, so long as they are not diverted to some use substantially different from that for which they were originally intended: 2 Dillon on Municipal Corporations, 656, and authorities there cited; Cooley on Constitutional Limitations (5th Ed.), 335, and note."

On page 502 he said:

"A city occupies, as it were, a dual relation to the State—the one governmental or political, and the other proprietary or private. In its governmental or political capacity it is nothing more than a mere governmental agent, subject to the absolute control of the Legislature, except as restricted by the Constitution, and such property and easements as it may have in public streets and ways is held by it in such capacity, and at the will of the Legislature."

And on page 504 he said:

"It is competent for the Legislature, in the exercise of its plenary powers over public highways of the City of Portland, to transfer the management and control of the bridges and ferries in question from the Commission appointed by it to the county, and to determine and provide the mode in which the burden of maintaining and keeping them in repair shall be borne in the future."

By a number of decisions the United States Supreme Court has estabhshed the law relating to navigable rivers wholly within a State. The earlier decisions were made before Congress passed any law on the subject.

In the case of Willamette Iron Bridge Co. v. Hatch, 125 U. S. I, it was held that the provision in the "act for the admission of Oregon into the Union," 11 Stat. 383, c. 33, Sec.