In the course of the next few years the Court, speaking usually through the Chief Justice, decided several cases on principles favoring local interest, sometimes indeed curtailing the operation of previously established principles. For example, the Court held that, in the absence of specific legislation by Congress to the contrary, a State may erect a dam across navigable waters of the United States for local purposes ¹; that the mere grant of a charter to a corporation does not prevent the State from taxing such corporation on its franchises, notwithstanding that "the power to tax involves the power to destroy" ²; that the Federal Courts have no right to set a state enactment aside on the ground that it had divested vested rights, unless it had done so through impairing the obligation of contracts ³; that the first eight Amendments to the Constitution do not limit state power, but only Federal power 4; that decisions adverse to state laws must have the concurrence of a majority of the Court. 5 ¹ Wilson vs. Blackbird Creek Marsh Company (1829), 2 Peters, 245. ² Providence Bank vs. Billings (1830), 4 Peters, 514. ³ Satterlee vs. Matthewson (1829), 2 Peters, 380; and Watson vs. Mercer (1834), 8 Peters, 110. 4 Barron vs. Baltimore (1833), 7 Peters, 243. 5 See in this connection the Chief Justice's remarks in Briscoe vs. Bank of Kentucky, 8 Peters, 118. Despite all these concessions which he made to the rising spirit of the times, Marshall found his last years to be among the most trying of his chief justiceship. Jackson, who was now President, felt himself the chosen organ of "the People's will" and was not disposed to regard as binding anybody's interpretation of the Constitution except his own. The West and Southwest, the pocket boroughs of the new Administration, were now deep in land speculation and clamorous for financial expedients which the Constitution banned. John Taylor of Caroline had just finished his task of defining the principles of constitutional construction which were requisite to convert the Union into a league of States and had laid his work at the feet of Calhoun. Taylor was a candid man and frankly owned the historical difficulties in the way of carrying out his purpose; but Calhoun's less scrupulous dialectic swept aside every obstacle that stood in the way of attributing to the States the completest sovereignty.