440 THE BELLONA CO'S CASE.—3 BLAND.

tion; to attempt to claim the benefit of the irrepealable nature of
such an Act of incorporation, by allowing a part of the stock to be
held by one or more other persons; and so, under the disguise of
being a body politic, to protect himself from a personal responsi-
bility for his debts; and also to prevent the Legislature from alter-
ing the Act of incorporation under the notion, the good sense or
constitutionality of which I have never been able distinctly to
understand, that it was a contract, the obligation of which they
could not impair. It has always seemed to me to be very clear,
that no enactment of the General Assembly, whatever might be
its character, whether considered as a mere law, or as substanti-
ally a contract, should be permitted to be made an instrument of
fraud; or should have its operation continued in opposition to the
interests of the people, as declared by the General Assembly, at
the pleasure of any one man or set of men.

The defendants in their answer lay some stress upon the peculiar
character of the buildings of the plaintiffs, with which the pro-
posed road is to interfere. Admitting this to be one ol those
allegations in the answer which must be considered as directly
responsive to the bill; yet I do not see how the nature of the
buildings, or, in other words the mere amount of the injury likely
* to be done, can affect the question of right between these
parties. Unless, indeed, the damage should be shewn to be
so small, as, that the law would take no notice of it; as in actions
of waste, where the waste is unimportant in its nature and trivial
in amount. The Governors of Harrow School v. Alderton, 2 Bos.
& Pul. 86; The Universities of Oxford v. Richardson, 6 Ves. 706.
But these buildings, it must be recollected, have been put up, as
is alleged and admitted, for the manufacture of gunpowder; and
are more properly suited for that purpose than if they had been
constructed of brick, stone, or hard material strongly bound to-
gether; in which kind of edifices an explosion would be attended
with much more certain and wide-spreading destruction than in
lightly trained houses or sheds, such as these are described to be;
and therefore they could not be complained of as nuisances by
those residing in their vicinity; because of their being too danger-
ously or improperly constructed for the uses to which they are
applied. Crowder v. Tinkler, 19 Ves. 626. It is then manifest,
that the plaintiffs' cause of complaint cannot, in any sense, be
deemed frivolous because of the frail nature of their buildings.

As to the mere facts of this case there is then no substantial
difference between the parties. The plaintiffs assert and the de-
fendants admit, that the proposed railroad has been located, and
is intended to be constructed over a part of the land of the plain-
tiffs; and that one of their edifices, erected for the manufactory of
gunpowder, is intended to be removed. The distance which the
road is to pass over the land of the plaintiffs, and the amount of