“ Every independent nation has the exclusive jurisdiction over the navigable waters lying within its territorial limits. It has the right to regulate commerce upon them, and to determine what bridges may be built over them, or piers or wharves extended into them. And an erection authorized by the legislature cannot be a nuisance, public or private. This was the situation of the old States prior to the adoption of the Constitution. Each was then an independent sovereign State. But by the Constitution of the United States, they surrendered to the general government the power to regulate commerce. ”

“ The multiplication of commercial facilities will, in the same proportion, increase the articles of trade.
If viaducts must be thrown over the Ohio for the contemplated railroads, and bridges for the accommodation of the numerous and rising cities upon the banks of the river, it is of the highest importance that they should not be so built as materially to obstruct its commerce. If the obstructions which have been demonstrated to result from the Wheeling Bridge, are to be multiplied as these crossways are needed, our beautiful rivers will, in a great measure, be abandoned. ”

“ It does not come here to protect the rights of its citizens. The sovereign powers of a State are adequate to the protection of its own citizens, and no other jurisdiction can be exercised over them, or in their behalf, except in a few specified cases. Nor can the State prosecute this suit on the ground of any remote or contingent interest in itself. It assumes and claims, not an abstract right, but a direct interest in the controversy, and that the power of this court, can redress its wrongs and save it from irreparable injury. ”

“ In taking jurisdiction, as the law now stands, we must exercise a broad and undefinable discretion, without any certain and safe rule to guide us. And such a discretion, when men of science differ, when we are to consider the amount and value of trade, and the number of travellers on and across the stream, the interests of communities and States sometimes supposed to be conflicting, and the proper height and form of steamboat chimneys, such a discretion appears to me much more appropriately to belong to the Legislature than to the Judiciary. ”

“ Past experience teaches us, that however the facilities of commerce may be multiplied, her tracks will be filled with productions which enrich the country and add to the comforts and enjoyments of its rapidly increasing population. The rewards of labor will give an irresistible impulse to enterprise which must secure to our country a prosperity unequalled in history. Our internal commerce is more than three times as agreat as our foreign, and the increased lines of intercourse will cause both rapidly to advance. The protection of the river commerce is by no means hostile to any other. ”

“ The Bridge Company had legal notice of the institution of the suit, and of the application for an injunction to stay their proceedings, before their cables were thrown across the river. This should have induced them to suspend, for a time, their great work, alike creditable to the enterprise of their citizens, and the genius and science of the engineer who planned the bridge and superintended its construction. It is a matter of regret that, by the prosecution and completion of the bridge, they have incurred a high responsibility. ”

“ Believing that the question of nuisance or no nuisance is intrinsically a question of fact, which, when contested, ought to be tried at law upon the circumstances of each case, and that, before the ascertainment of that fact, a court of equity cannot take cognizance either for enjoining or abating an act alleged, but not proven, to be nuisance: Seeing that the commonwealth of Virginia, within whose territory and jurisdiction the Wheeling Bridge has been erected, has authorized and approved the erection of that bridge ”

“ If the obstruction complained of be an injury, it would be difficult to state a stronger case for the extraordinary interposition of a court of chancery. In no case could a remedy be more hopeless by an action at common law. The structure complained of its permanent, and so are the public works sought to be protected. The injury, if there be one, is as permanent as the work from which it proceeds, and as are the works affected by it. And whatever injury there may now be, will become greater in proportion to the increase of population and the commercial developments of the country. ”

“ The attorney-general is not a party. Pennsylvania sues as an individual for a private right. And in a case of this description I am not aware of any case entitled to be regarded as an authority in this court, where chancery ever interfered by injunction except by way of prevention, that is, to stay the contemplated structure, until it could be decided, in a proceeding to which the public was a party, whether it was a public nuisance or not. We must be careful not to confound cases of public nuisance with merely private ones. ”

“ It is plain that any accident, under these circumstances, involves hazard and destruction to life and property, exposing officers, passengers, and crew to disaster and death in the most appalling form. Numerous instances of casualties are spoken of by the witnesses, that have happened on the small boats passing bridges on the Monongahela and in the Louisville Canal. What, then, is to be apprehended at the Wheeling Bridge on the Ohio River, if the packets are to be subjected to such condition? ”

“ A steamboat, to be under the command of the helm, must have a pressure of steam, which, with the current, would give it a considerable velocity in passing the draw, and any deviation from the direct line by the wind, the eddies and currents of the river, in high water, might throw the boat against the bridge on either side. This might be fatal to the boat and to the lives of its passengers; and the danger would be greatly increased by attempting to pass the draw at night, especially when the weather is unfavorable to navigation. ”

“ Whilst courts of justice, therefore, will enforce the conventing of all whose interest can properly be adjudged, they will repel and even rebuke attempts to assail, or even to canvass, the rights and interests of others, by those who in effect concede the want of a legal or equitable title in themselves. Courts of justice take no cognizance of imperfect rights, or such as may be termed merely moral or incidental, as distinguishable from legal or equitable, even when the existence of the former may be clearly shown. ”

“ It is said that there is no common law of the Union on which the procedure can be founded; that the common law of Virginia is subject to its legislative action, and that the bridge, having been constructed under its authority, it can in no sense be considered a nuisance. That whatever shall be done within the limits of a State, is subject to its laws, written or unwritten, unless it be a violation of the Constitution, or of some act of Congress. ”

“ In the first place being an injury to trade, the full extent of injury cannot be measured in damages, any more than in cases of nuisance to health, it can be ascertained how many months or weeks or hours life may be shortened. In the second place, it is unceasing and without end. While the water flows and the bridge stands the injury continues. The mischief is not only irreparable, but the litigation to which it must lead would be vexatious in the last degree. The strife and contention that must follow, are also of the most serious character. ”

“ With utter disregard to the principles of science and the exigencies of commerce, low-water level is taken as the basis of elevation for the Wheeling Bridge, and upon usual floods only a space one hundred feet in width by fifty in height is allowed for the passage of vessels ascending and descending the Ohio River through that space the commerce of the most navigable river in the world is compelled to stoop and dodge in high floods. ”

“ The repugnancy of the State law to the Constitution, is placed entirely on its repugnancy to the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States; a power which has not been so exercised as to affect the question. ”

“ It was, no doubt, in view of this compact, that in the charter for the bridge, it was required to be so elevated, as not, at the greatest height of the water, to obstruct navigation. Any individual may abate a public nuisance. ”

“ And upon principle, independently of adjudications, it cannot be otherwise. A structure which promotes the convenience of the public, cannot be a nuisance to it. And the public, whose interests are to be looked to in this case, is not the public of any particular town or district of country, or State or States, but the great public of the whole Union. ”

“ Equally, or rather more unsound and untrue, is the position that, by the same designation of Pittsburg, Congress have declared that vessels propelled by wind or steam, vessels of the greatest capacity, carrying masts or chimneys of illimitable height, shall navigate a river whose ordinary regimen, to adopt a term in this record, scarcely affords a channel broad or deep enough for the tacking of a shallop, and for long periods of a few inches only in depth. ”

“ Pennsylvania is the only party asking for relief; and her damage, as proved in the record, is a trivial loss of some few dollars in tolls; and the mere possibility of an annual future loss to some small amount, concerning which the testimony is vague and inconclusive, and at best but conjectural. She has no concern with the obstruction to boats with high chimneys, nor with the amount of trade from Pittsburg, or any other place, further than such evidence tends to show the bridge to be a public nuisance. ”

“ The shadowy pretext of an interest or injury, from the nature of things not susceptible of calculation or estimate, can never be the foundation of a right, legal or equitable. And, indeed, so far as any light can be reflected by facts on this pretended or incidental interest of Pennsylvania, resulting from any supposed effect upon the tolls on her canals, an actual increase instead of a diminution of those tolls since the erection of the Wheeling Bridge, is proved. ”

“ By the evidence, it is shown, that from the port of Pittsburg, ships have been cleared for foreign ports, laden with domestic products. Revenue and war vessels have been constructed there for the general government, and a large and prosperous business in ship-building and naval architecture is springing up. The bridge at Wheeling necessarily involves the total destruction of this business, and the exclusion of such vessels and their commerce from the ports of Pennsylvania. Upon steam-vessels the exclusion operates with but little less injury. ”

“ Congress have not declared in terms that a State, by the construction of bridges, or otherwise, shall not obstruct the navigation of the Ohio, but they have regulated navigation upon it, as before remarked, by licensing vessels, establishing ports of entry, imposing duties upon masters and other officers of boats, and inflicting severe penalties for neglect of those duties, by which damage to life or property has resulted. ”

“ If the obstruction be slight, as a draw in a bridge, which would be safe and convenient for the passage of vessels, it would not be regarded as a nuisance, where proper attention is given to raise the draw on the approach of vessels. Of this character is the complaint of the plaintiff against the bridge, that it obstructs sea-vessels built at Pittsburg. Sails cannot be used to advantage on the Ohio or the Mississippi, consequently there can be no necessity of raising the masts until it becomes necessary to hoist the sails. ”

“ Even in matters of minor concernment, I have always been unwilling, whenever the credibility of witnesses was to be tested, to interpose between such persons and the scrutiny of a jury, awakened, as it is sure to be, by the vigilance of the advocate; where the essential rights and interests of great communities are at stake, I never will do so, unless constrained by irresistible authority. ”

“ Congress have led in regulating commerce on the Ohio, which brings the case within the rule above laid down. The facts of the two cases, therefore, instead of being alike, are altogether different.
No State law can hinder or obstruct the free use of a license granted under an act of Congress. Nor can any State violate the compact, sanctioned as it had been, by obstructing the navigation of the river. More than this is not necessary to give a civil remedy for an injury done by an obstruction. ”

“ The power to regulate commerce was given to the federal government, whose functions and objects were designed to be general and coextensive with the entire confederacy, because its duties embrace the equal rights and interests of all the members of the confederacy, and as a mean of the widest diffusion of commercial facilities and intercourse within the powers vested by the Constitution. ”