The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-04-12

to consider the injury to vested prop Ierty interests, the damage in many cases
 to adjoining proprietors, and the great interference, especially in the case of
 roads from town to town, with the
 use of the public highways by those
 for whose need and convenience they
 were originally laid out, and are now
 maintained. Permit me to call your
 attention to the doctrine of the courts
 on this question. Mere convenience
 does not constitute necessity, but there
 must be magnitude of interests to
 determine that there is a public neces-
 sity.
 Great Fall Manufacturing Company
 vs. Fernald, AT N H., 444.
 The Massachusetts supreme court has
 held in sundry eases under the flowage
 and mill acts in Massachusetts, that
 d great mill power might be a public
 use, but small mill power might not 1 The question of public use or necessity depends on the situation and wants of
 a community for the time being.
 Scudder vs Trenton, Del, Falls Com
 pany, first New Jersey Equity, 694.
 A case of public necessity is not made l out by proof of much convenience, nor
 of enhancement of values of property.
 Spring Valley Water Works Company l vs. San Mateo Water Works Com l pany, GA California. 129.
 There has been some clamor in these
 electric railroad cases, from persons
 who speak without full knowledge or due investigation, that you should grant nearly all charters that are de- | I1osa T q ft++ 1D f they are needed for what is called suburban development. An investiga- 1 ton of recent volumes of our special acts will show that. enough such char 1 ters granted in the last few years, are
 now in existence, to meet all legitimate ] demands for either urban or suburban
 uses for the next twenty years. No committee of our superior court in highway case has ever laid out a pub | lie highway, merely because it was
 shown that it might develop some sub | urban lands into building lots. Before we take up the special peti- | tions or resolutions now before you, let me call your attention to the fact that in nearly all of them, and in some, without any notice in the petitions, authority is given in the charter reso- lutions, to take lands, and a right of way over private property in the same manner as steam railroads may take lands, and in some of these charters no tribunal whatever is provided to pass upon the approval of the taking of the lands, but the corporations them selves are made the sole judges of the right to take them.
 The advocates of these charters have in every instance failed to observe the provisions of section 392 of the general statutes, which require before a fran chise can be given to construct a rail- road over private property, that maps and plans of the proposed route should be prepared by a competent engineer,
 together with estimates of the cost etc., and that these should be laid be- fore the committee of the general as- sembly. No such evidence has been produced in any of these cases.
 It may be said by some one, hastily, that the provisions of section 392 in relation to an engineers plan, apply only to steam railroads, because the rule of construction laid down on the first page of the general statutes makes the words ''railroad company" mean a steam railroad. That rule of construc- ton, however, expressly provides that the words railroad company" shall be construed to mean railroads operated by steam power, only in those cases where such meaning is not repugnant to the context, or to the manifest inten- ton of the general assembly. The provisions of section 3454 of the general statutes show that all railroads oper- ated by any other than animal power, are to be subject in many cases to the same general laws as steam railroads and the context of section 392 shows that there is one rule of notice and evidence for horse railroads before the general assembly, and another for all other railroads, and that manifest ly, the reason for requiring a different rule for steam railroads, applies to any railroad operated by an power, that is not to be laid out through the public | highways.
 It should also be remembered that | this partcualr rule of construction in | the first chapter of our general statutes was copied therein in 1887, from chapter | 110 of the public acts of 1884, and that in both of those years, in the state of | there were only two | ClaSSeS Ol IdlIIOduS kHOWn, to Wll, l steam railroads and horse railroads | in the public streets. Electric roads 1 were not known in 1884. In these char | ters the right of eminent domain is | given without any protection for the | land owner. There is no provision for | protecting the municipalities against | electric roads crossing highways at grade. There is no provision under which the municipal authorities of the town can be heard in relation to the layout
 Most of these proposed charters, or of existing charters, give the right to the corporations to con- solidate with any other electric road and confers upon all elec- Eric railroad corporations with which is so made, the same pow sr of eminent domain that is conferred n these special charters.
 By a remarkable coincidence it sug- gests the existence of an unknown, 1 out master mind and hand, in these charters, which, while independent as | o name, and separate as to corporators, ire so arranged that if granted, a parallel electric road can be constructed rom Sprinfield to Hartford, and from