THE BELLONA CO'S CASE.—3 BLAND. 437

for the use of the public, to interfere, in any way, with the char-
tered rights of the plaintiffs, much less to authorize any subse-
quent private corporation to take, for their private benefit, any
portion of the rights to which the plaintiffs were entitled, under
their prior incorporation; but that no such authority was, in fact,
conferred, or designed to be conferred upon the defendants by
their Act of incorporation; their whole power to take lands tor
their use, against the will of the proprietors, being limited to the
case of individual proprietors, and not embracing the case of lands
held by any previously incorporated companies, such as those
belonging to the plaintiffs. Whereupon the plaintiffs prayed,
that the defendants might be enjoined from making their road as
located over the lands of the plaintiffs.

KELL, Associate Judge, 25th August, 1831.—Let injunction
issue as prayed; to be dissolved on the 5th of September on motion
therefor; unless the complainants satisfy the Court, by affidavits,
which they are hereby authorized to take before a justice of the
peace, that the railroad can be located as suggested by complain
ants, or the same be admitted by the answers of the defendants.
The affidavits to be taken upon two dajs notice to the opposite
part\ or their solicitor.

Under this order the depositions of several witnesses were taken,
returned, and filed. And on the 14th of September, 1831, the
defendants put in their answer, in which they admit, that the Acts
for incorporating such a company, as the plaintiffs claim to be,
were passed by the Legislature, as set forth in the bill; but they
do not admit, that the actual incorporation of the plaintiffs ever
did follow from those Acts; or if it did, that they now have any
existence as a body politic; on the contrary, they aver and believe,
that James Beatty, of the City of Baltimore, is the sole, and only
proprietor of the property known as the Bellona Gunpowder Com-
pany's * Works; and that, in consequence of there being no 444,
other corporator of the alleged company, the charter, if
any ever existed, has become null and void, and the company
without any right or capacity whatever to sue or be sued. That
the buildings of every description erected on the land claimed by
the plaintiffs, were of the meanest kind; being principally con-
structed of unfinished plank, and deserving more properly the
appellation of sheds than houses; that the defendants were in-
corporated by the Acts of 1827, ch. 72, and 1830, ch. 49, under
the authority of which laws they had proceeded to lay out the
site and route of their railroad over the land of the plaintiffs,
towards the Town of Westminster; the location of which branch
railroad does not, in any manner, interfere with any of the charter
rights or privileges of the plaintiffs; and that a location of it in