So in the Hurtado case, which has been described at length, no description of due process of law was found better and none is better than that given by Webster so many years before in the Dartmouth College case. The Supreme Court of New Hampshire, from whose judgment that cause came up by writ of error, had held--and on that point its decision was final--that the change in the college charter was no violation of the bill of rights embodied in the Constitution of that state. This, following _Magna Charta_, provided (Part I, Art. 15) that no subject should be "despoiled or deprived of his property, immunities, or privileges, put out of the protection of the law, exiled, or deprived of his life, liberty or estate, but by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land." _Magna Charta_ was wrung from a tyrant king. So, said the State court, this article was inserted to protect the citizens against the abuse of the executive power. When it speaks of the law of the land it means the law of New Hampshire, and that is whatever the legislature of New Hampshire chooses to enact, so long as it contravenes no other constitutional provision. Webster, in paving the way toward his claim that the charter was a contract, and, as a vested right of property, inviolable by a State, alluded to the sacredness of all rights under the guaranties to be found in our American system of constitutional government. It was not surprising that the Constitution of the United States should protect them in the way he asserted. All the States, and New Hampshire among them, had done the same in placing the great features of _Magna Charta_ in their bills of rights. What, he asked, was this law of the land by which all things were to be tried and judged? This was his answer: "By the law of the land is most clearly intended the general law; a law which hears before it condemns; which proceeds upon inquiry, and renders judgment only after trial. The meaning is that every citizen shall hold his life, liberty, property and immunities under the protection of the general rules which govern society. Everything which may pass under the form of an enactment is not therefore to be considered the law of the land. If this were so, acts of attainder, bills of pains and penalties, acts of confiscation, acts reversing judgments, and acts directly transferring one man's estate to another, legislative judgments, decrees and forfeitures in all possible forms, would be the law of the land."[Footnote: "Works of Daniel Webster," V, 486.]