Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/475

 468 FEDERAL EBPORTER. �bïiefly the objecta for which railroada were created, and the obligations and duties imposed on them by law. �Eailroads are quasi public institutions; they are authorized to facilitate, and not to control or force from legitimate and natural channels, or hinder or obstruot, the business of the country. Hence, the companies organized to construct them were invested with the right of eminent domain, with authority to condemn private property necessarytothefullenjoymentof their franchise, on paying just compensation therefor. The authority to do this could only be conferred upon the theory that the public interests which they are supposed to repre- Bent require such seizure and appropriation. Under our government private property cannot be taken for any other than public uses; vested rights can be made to yield only to the public necessities. Eailroads are held to be such necessi- ties, and it is solely on this ground that their constraction has been encouraged by liberal grants of power, and aided by private and public contributions. As quasi public instru- mentalities, organized to promote the public good, they are, unless plainly and constitutionally exempted from such lia- bility, amenable to such just regulations as the legislative department may choose from time to time to prescribe. AU laws deemed necessary to insure good faithin the exercise of their franchises, or to enforce an honest, impartial and «fiScient discharge of their legal duties and obligations, may be enacted, and if the right has not been contracted away the legislature may prescribe their schedule of charges, compel every necessary facility to the public and to individuals, to the estent of their means, enact police regulations, limit the speed of trains, command the use of signais, and order or iuhibit the doing of any and everything expedient to advance the general interest of commerce and intercommunication, insure safety to travelers, and generally to subserve the pur- poses of their creation, restricted only by the constitutional limitation that vested rights are not impaired without just compensation ; and they are as amenable to the unwritten (as j't has been judicially expounded) as to the statute law. �The first, and perhaps the most important, of these prinoi- ����