134 BINNEY'S CASE.—2 BLAND.

of a very complicated nature, where a single corporator has by bill
in equity called the corporation itself to account, in order to obtain
his due share of rents and profits; Adleyv. The Whitstable Company,
17 Ves. 316; 8. C. 1 Meriv. 107; and also where the body politic
itself has, by bill, asked to have relief against its own directors,
officers and servants, in respect of their frauds, mismanagement
or breaches of trust. The Charitable Corporation v. Sutton, 9 Mod.
350: S. C. 2 Atk. 400; Drewry v. Barnes, 3 Cond. Chan. Rep. 311.
But this is the first instance, in this Court, in which a member has
charged the body politic itself with making expenditures not for
corporate purposes; and, on that ground, prayed to have it pre-
vented from doing so by injunction.

It is said, that, in this case, such a restriction may be imposed;
because, the State is a stockholder; and. therefore, that the public
is peculiarly interested ia the proper application of the corporate
funds. But if the Republic condescends to become a dealer in
stocks, and to place herself upon the foot merely of a corporator,
or member of an incorporated company, she must, by so doing, be
presumed to have consented to have her funds so invested, sub-
jected to the same management, and made liable in the same man-
ner, and to the same extent as those of the individual corporators I
with whom she has become so associated. U. S. Bank v. Planters
Bank, 9 Wheat. 907; Towson v. The Havre de Grace Bank, 6 H. &
J. 52.

It seems to follow as a just, and necessary consequence, from the
very nature of delegated and limited powers, with which kind of
authority alone this corporation has been invested, that there ought
to be, and must exist somewhere a superintending authority to re-
strain and confine the exercise of such powers within the limits
assigned to them. Within the scope of its general and discre-
tionary powers, the authority of the corporation to dispose of its
funds, for any purpose whatever, may be admitted to be absolute
and beyond all control. But, if property be given to a body politic
for certain specified and limited purposes, any application of it to
an obviously different object is a violation of the law; and conse-
quently, expenditures not for corporate purposes, in whatever
* way they may have been authorized by the body politic,
143 may be enjoined and prohibited. Child v. Hudson's Bay
Company, 2 P. Will. 207; Attorney-General v. The Governors of the
Foundling Hospital, 2 Ves. Jun. 43; The Mayor and Commonalty of
Colchester v. Lowten, 1 Ves. & Bea. 226; Gray v. Chaplin, 1 Cond.
Chan. Hep. 451; Bromley v. Smith, 2 Cond. Chan. Hep. 5; Blain v.
Agar, 2 Cond. Chan. Rep. 19; Hichens v. Congreve, 3 Cond. Chan.
Rep. 796; The People v. The Utica, Insurance Company, 15 John.
Rep. 358.

It is therefore conceived, that this resolution of The Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal Company, by which these projected and in part