112 BINNEY'S CASE

It is stated, that the plaintiff is debarred from the use of
his with still greater injury by The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal

Company, who are erecting an immense dam,
abutted on his land, in Montgomery county, and extending entirely
across the river, and of sufficient dimensions to obstruct the whole
of its waters from their accustomed channel, and to divert them
entirely away from his finds; and thus totally destroy the advanta-
ges, for mill-sites, which they naturally possess; and also to deprive
him of his rights under the act of 1784, ch. 33, s. 13. All which
has been done, or is about to be done by the defendants, without the
consent of the plaintiff; without his having been compensated for
his property; and without its having been valued and condemned
in any manner according to law.

In the answers and their exhibits, it is alleged, that the body poli-
tic, created by the act of 1784, ch. 33, had, by virtue of their
powers, acquired a right to land in Montgomery county, at the place
in question; and had erected thereon a dam across the river, which
is to give place to the one now complained of; that the proposed
dam is neither to be abutted, nor erected on any part of the plain-
tiff's land; that the old canal, from the old dam downwards, was
twenty-five feet wide, and two feet deep; and, these defendants,
having resolved to use it, without any enlargement, as a feeder to
the new canal, deemed it necessary, in order to furnish a sufficient
supply of water to the new canal, to raise the new dam four feet
higher than the old one; so as to pass into that portion of the old
canal, designed as a feeder, a depth of six feet of water. And it
is further alleged, that the proposed elongation of the new canal,
and the mode of supplying it with water, have been determined
upon with a view to the uses for which the canal was specially
designed; and to those reservations, in the acts incorporating these
defendants, in favour of Maryland, Virginia, and Congress; and,
likewise, with a view to such other uses as were not then, but
which might thereafter be allowed to be made of the water thus
introduced into that end of the new canal; and these defendants
did, accordingly, petition the several legislatures for the privileges,
denied to them in their charter, of applying the surplus water in the
canal to manufactories; and they now claim the right to sell and
dispose of the waste water; wherever wastes shall be essential to
the security of their canal; and it is positively denied, that the
whole of the waters of the river, or even one tenth part of them, at
their most reduced summer volume, can be diverted by the dam,