The charter of a mediaeval town was a kind of written contract by which the town obtained certain specified immunities or privileges from the sovereign or from a great feudal lord, in exchange for some specified service which often took the form of a money payment.

As Story pointed out, no one denied that the charter of the Charles River Bridge Company was a contract, and, as he insisted, it is only common sense as well as common justice and elementary law, that contracts of this character should be reasonably interpreted so far as quiet enjoyment of the consideration granted is concerned; but all this availed nothing.

Neither have the masters of slaves in our colonies any title to their slaves on account of any charters, which they may be able to produce, though their charters are the only source of their power.

This boundless charter is the right of genius.

This Charter was a guarantee of that Constitution.

All this confusion tends to prove, on the authority of the historians of the epoch, and the charters so carefully collected by the learned, that this question, now so impossible to solve, was even then not rightly understoodwhat were really those fierce and redoubtable Frisons in their popular and political relations?

But in itself the Charter was no novelty, nor did it claim to establish any new constitutional principles.

A charter is a grant of certain powers or privileges, given to a part of the community for the advantage of the whole, and is, therefore, liable, by its nature, to change or to revocation.