CHARTER, a document by which a su perior power grants permanent or continuing rights and privileges to an inferior, either a person or persons, corporation or institution, colony, municipality, etc. Originally it had the broader sense, now obsolete, of a conveyance of land. The media val charters ranged from a grant of political rights by a sovereign to an entire people— like the Great Charter of Eng land or the Golden Bull of Hungary, or colo nial instruments of government conferring the broadest rights of sovereignty—down to per missive acts for abbeys and colleges or trading companies, or confirmations of rights already given (called confirmatory charters). The first-named class in modern usage is called a constitution. Thus, the agreements by which recent monarchs have deprived themselves or been deprived of absolute power and shared it with their people, as with Austria in 1866, Japan in 1868, etc., are essentially the same as Magna Charta. Charters in present usage are restricted to municipalities, corporations and institutions.
The charters for the American colonies were usually distinguished from °patents') by granting specific privileges of jurisdiction and legislation, and in general the powers needed to establish and continue a self-regulating com munity, instead of mere general grants of land and rights of settlement; but the two were often loosely, used as interchangeable. Thus, in the acknowledgment of receipt of their char ter in 1662, the Connecticut officials acknowl edge also the "old charter," meaning the War wick Patent. Strictly, they were all patents, as granted by the king under letters patent; but in use, only the grants to individuals were commonly termed patents, the word charter being reserved for those to companies and col onies already established. Of these three spe cies, the first includes the patents to Lord Bal timore for Maryland in 1632, to Gorges for Maine in 1639, to the Duke of York (after ward James II) for New York in 1664 and to William Penn for Pennsylvania in 1681. The second comprises those to the Virginia Com pany in 1606, 1609 and 1612, the Plymouth and London companies in 1606, the Council for New England in 1620, the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629, the proprietors of Carolina (1663) and Georgia (1732). The third has the two exemplars of Rhode Island (1643, con firmed 1663) and Connecticut (1662): instru ments of such complete self-government that those States made no change at the Revolution, the former living under its 17th-century char ter till 1818 and the latter till it was forced to change it by the Dorr rebellion in 1842. The legal nature and implications of these docu ments were keenly disputed in the age when their interpretation was vital, and have been argued with scarcely less heat for historical reasons since. According to the English view,
they were concessions granted by the govern ment for political reasons and revocable at its pleasure for the same reasons; the, title to the lands as well as to the political privileges lay with the government, and its right to vacate either was limited only by policy; and charter governments had only such powers as were specifically given them in the charters. James II put some of these theories in practice in the union of New England in 1685 and others were acted upon generally. On the other hand the colonial view was set forth by Jeremiah Dum mer in his 'Defense of the Charters' (1728) ; at least it was widely adopted. It was, that the charters were compacts between the gov ernment and the colonies, in consideration of the latter having cleared and taken possession of the territory and annexed it to the Crown; and that the Crown possessed only political rights there, the land title being derived from purchase and occupation and their own cour age and labor. As to the powers of the char ter governments, Judge Story holds that they possessed full sovereignty and power of legis lation and taxation, subject only to not con tradicting the laws of the mother country. The truth is that neither side had any very definite views on the matter at the outset and both de veloped antagonistic ones under the stress of interest.
In the United States, charters (special or general) arc granted by acts of the several State legislatures or by the national govern ment. Thus, the National Banking Act, and the general railroad acts of most States prescribe the conditions under which corporations of those classes may organize without special per mission and their articles of association are their charter. The act by which a county or township is set oft as an administrative divi sion of a State is not termed a charter. On the other hand, that by which a municipality is organized, as a city or borough, is always so termed; but it has the vital distinction from a private charter that it is not a contract; the municipality has no vested rights, being a mere governmental agency and convenience; and the charter can be altered or repealed at any time by the legislature. A private charter, on the other hand, is a contract which cannot be re pealed or modified by the public power unless such liberty has been expressly reserved in the charter itself. (See CORPORATIONS. LEGAL; DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE). Consult Cooley, 'General Principles of Constitutional Law in the United Dicey, 'Letters Introduc tory to the Study of the Law of the English Constitution) (5th ed., London 1912) ; Mac Donald, 'Select Charters of American His tory, 1606-1775) (New York 1904).