448 MUEDOCK'S CASE.—2 BLAFD.

as the nature of the case might require. To this bill there was
subjoined an affidavit of the plaintiff in the usual form. Upon
which it was submitted.

BLAND, C., 20th April, 1830.—The plaintiff prays for an injunc-
tion of a more extensive operation than can now be granted. He
asks not merely, that things may be preserved in their present
condition, but that some things which have been done may be un-
done; in other words, he asks the Court now, and at once, to put
forth in his behalf its remedial as well as its conservative powers.

Bnt before imputed wrong can be removed, or any thing like
* commutative justice can be administered, it is the duty of
470 the Court to give the party complained of an opportunity
of being heard. To restrain a defendant from making any abusive
use of the property in question; or from disposing of it past recall,
amounts to no more than the imposition of a temporary limitation
upon the free exercise of Ms rights, even if it should eventually
appear to be entirely and rightfully his; which is quite as far as
any Court can go in the first instance; and as preparatory to a fair
and beneficial hearing and final adjudication. To order a defend-
ant to pull down or remove any erection would be obviously and
directly to deprive him of a portion of that which then, at least,
appeared to be his property, and was so claimed by him; and that
too, at once, and without a hearing; for a house, a fence, or the
like has a value, as such, which would be totally destroyed by
its being pulled down, and which does not belong to the mate-
rials of which it was composed, however carefully they may be
preserved.

The only object of the conservative power of the Court, as ex-
pressed in an injunction of this kind, is, not to determine any contro-
verted right, but merely to prevent a threatened wrong, or any
further perpetration of injury, or the doing of any act thereafter
whereby the right to a thing may be embarrassed, or endangered,
or whereby its value may be materially lessened, or the thing itself
may be totally lost. The principal object of an injunction, in cases
of this kind, is to prevent irreparable injury by preserving things
in their present state; but if the injunction were to order any
thing to be pulled down or undone, it is obvious, that it might be,
itself used as a means of producing that very kind of irreparable
injury to the defendant which the bill charged him with being
about to perpetrate against the plaintiff. Duvall v. Waters, 1
Bland, 569.

There are, however, some cases in which an injunction has been
so framed as, apparently, to approach to the very verge of ordering
a thing to be undone. As where the regular flowing of a stream
of water had been so interrupted by the making, or the interposi-
tion of occasional breaches or obstructions, as to be very injurious