Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/345

 HATCH V, WALLAMET IBON BBIDGE 00. 333 �free navigability to the inhabitants of the Union, against the possible exactions and obstructions of local authority, prompted by considerations of local convenience or selfish- ness. The provision, even to its very langtiage, is as old as the articles of compact between the original states and the people and the states of the territory north-west of the Ohio, contained in the ordinance of 1787, for the government of said territory, from the fourth of which it is copied. This ordinance was ratified or recognized by the first congress under the constitution, (1 St. 50,) and the provision securing the freedom of "the navigable waters leading into the Missis- sippi and St. Lawrence" has been continued in force in ail the states formed out of said territory to this day. Cohimbus Ins. Co. V. Curtenius, 6 McLean, 209. �In Penn. v. W. d B. Bridge Co. 13 How. 518, it was held that a provision in a compact (December 18, 1789) between Virginia and Kentucky concerning the erection of the latter into a state, to the efifeet that the navigation of the Ohio, so far as the territory of the two states joined thereon, "shall be free and common to the citizens of the United States," which vyas afterwards sanctioned by congress in. the passage of-the act (1 St. 189) admitting Kentucky into the Union, wap a restraint upon the power of Virginia to obstruct the naviga- tion of said river by the erection, of a bridge thereon within her own limits, and that a bridge so erected, which wag, a substantial obstruction to aueh navigation, was a nuisance and unlawful. �To the same efifect is the decision in Columbus Ins. Co. v. Curtenius, supra, in which it was held that congress had de- clared, by the ordinance of 1787 and otherwise, that thenav- gable tributaries of the Mississippi were free and common highways to the citizens of the United States, and that there- fore an act of the legislature of Illinois, authorizing the con- struction of a bridge across the Illinois river, near Peoria, was void if such bridge was a material obstruction to the naviga- tion of said river, as being in conflict with the federal legis- lation declaring it free and common. �These decisions are the authoritative and uncontradicted ��� �