Benjamin Robbins Curtis

“ The power of the State to enable a corporation to build another road to carry merchandise only, seems to me to have nothing to do with this question. When the legislature shall adjudge that the public convenience requires another railroad there, to carry merchandise only, and that therefore the power of eminent domain may be exercised to build it, and when a company is found ready to accept such a charter, and risk their funds in its construction, then a case will arise under the power of the legislature to authorize a road for the transportion of merchandise only. ”

“ In my opinion this class of passengers on the complainants' road, are as truly within the contract as any others; and a railroad, the object of which is to take away this class of passengers from the complainants' road, is one which the State has promised it would not authorize to be built.
Parties may agree, not only on the substantial rights to be protected, but on the particular mode of protecting them; and if they do agree on a particular mode, it becomes a part of their contract, which each party have a just right to have executed. ”

“ They enter into a contract which by its terms protects this increased travel during the whole period, and by whatever causes produced, just as much as it protects the travel existing during the first month after the opening of the road. How then can we engraft upon the contract an exception not found there, and say, that when it speaks generally of passengers travelling upon the road, it does not mean passengers which another railroad corporation has brought there? ”