United States v. Railway & Telegraph Cos. transfer to be held and considered, for all the purposes of the act, a fulfilment on the part of said railroad companies of the provisions of the act "in regard to the construction of said lines of telegraph." But such an arrangement accompanied by the transfer of telegraph lines constructed by telegraph companies to the roadway of the railroad company, had no other effect than to relieve the railroad company from any present duty itself to construct a telegraph line to be used under the franchises granted and for the purposes indicated by Congress. It did not affect the authority of Congress, under its reserved power, to require the railroad company itself to maintain or operate in the future, by its officers and employes alone, telegraph lines on its main road and branches. Indeed, no arrangement of the character specified could have been made, except in full view of the power reserved to add to, alter or amend the act that permitted it. Although, as just stated, that power could not have been exercised, so as to divest either the railroad company or the telegraph company of property already acquired or to disturb or annul any transaction fully consummated, while such arrangement was in force, it was competent for Congress to make such additions to, or such alterations. or amendments of, previous statutes as would secure the maintenance or operation by the railroad company, through its own officers and employes, of a telegraph line over and along its main line and branches. It is of no consequence that such legislation may defeat the purpose contemplated by the parties to an arrangement of the character described; for they contracted, and could only have contracted, in view of the possible exercise by Congress of the power expressly reserved by it. If we should hold the addition made by the act of 1888 to the act of 1862, and the acts amendatory thereof, to be beyond the power of Congress, it would be difficult, if not impossible. to prescribe the lines within which the United States v. Railway & Telegraph Cos. national Legislature must keep, and beyond which it may not pass, when exerting its reserved power of adding to, altering or amending statutes and charters of incorporation. We have, therefore, considered the question before us just as if a contract or arrangement, between the railroad and telegraph company, for the construction by the latter of a telegraph line on the route of the former, expressly recited the provision of the act of 1862, by which Congress reserved the power, to be exerted at any time, to add to, amend or repeal the act which authorized such contract or arrangement. In this view, it must be held that by its reservation of authority to add to, alter, amend or repeal the acts in question, whenever it chose so to do, Congress, subject to the limitation that rights actually vested or transactions fully consummated could not be disturbed, intended to keep within its control the entire subject of railroad and telegraphic communication between the Missouri river and the Pacific ocean, through the agency of corporations created by it, or that had accepted the bounty of the government. It was never intended that the railroad companies, accepting such bounty, should be able, by any contract or arrangement with telegraph companies, to discharge themselves, for all time and beyond the authority of Congress otherwise to provide, from the obligation to exercise, by their officers and agents exclusively, the telegraphic franchises received by them from the National Government. These principles are fully supported by former decisions, in which this court has determined the scope and effect of constitutional or statutory provisions that reserved to the Legislature granting charters of incorporation, or enacting statutes under which private rights might be acquired, the power to alter, amend or repeal such charters or statutes. VOL. VI-47. United States v. Railway & Telegraph Cos. Tomlinson v. Jessup, 15 Wall. 454, 457, 458; Miller v. State, 15 Wall. 478; Holyoke Company v. Lyman, 15 Wall. 500; Sinking Fund Cases, 99 U. S. 700, 720, 721; Greenwood v. Freight Co., 105 U. S. 13, 21; Close v. Glenwood Cemetery, 107 U. S. 466, 476; Spring Valley Water Works Co. v. Schottler, 110 U. S. 347, 352; Louisville Gas Co. v. Citizens' Gas Co., 115 U. S. 683, 696; Gibbs v. Consolidated Gas Co., 130 U. S. 396, 408; Sioux City Street Railway v. Sioux City, 138 U. S. 98, 108; Louisville Water Co. v. Clark, 143 U. S. 1, 12, 14; Hamilton Gas Light Co. v. Hamilton City, 146 U. S. 258, 270; N. Y. & N. E. Railroad v. Bristol, 151 U. S. 556, 567. What has been said in reference to the effect of the reservation in the act of 1862 of the right of adding to, altering, amending or repealing its provisions, is applicable to the fourth section of the Idaho act of July 2, 1864, which permitted the several railroad companies referred to in the act of 1862 to make an arrangement with the United States Telegraph Company, such as was permitted by the nineteenth section of the act of 1862 to be made with the telegraph companies therein named. The fourth section of the Idaho act was, in legal effect, nothing more than an amendment or enlargement of the nineteenth section of the act of 1862, by adding the name of another telegraph. company to those mentioned in the latter section. It was suggested in argument that the objects of the act of 1862 could be fully accomplished by means of a telegraph company, incorporated by one of the States, and which, by placing its lines on the route of the railroad, could meet all the demands, as well of the railroad company, as of the government and the general public. But this suggestion can have no weight in the present inquiry. For if, as intimated, the execution of the act of 1888 will result in no real good to the general public, and may even be injurious to the pecuniary interests which the government has in the Union Pacific Railway and its branches, United States v. Railway & Telegraph Cos. that is a question of public policy, with which the judiciary is not concerned, and the responsibility for which is with another branch of the government. We perceive no escape from the conclusion that it is. entirely competent for Congress to add to, alter or amend the acts of 1862 and 1864, so as to require the Union Pacific Railway Company possessing the rights and powers of its constituent companies, to maintain and operate, by and through its own officers and employes, telegraph lines, for railroad, governmental, commercial and other purposes, and to exercise itself and alone all the telegraphic franchises conferred upon it. It is enjoying the bounty of the government, subject to the condition, among others, that it will perform these duties whenever required by Congress. It becomes necessary now to determine in what respects the agreements of 1866, 1869, 1871 and 1881, if kept and performed by the defendants, are inconsistent with the rights of the United States, and whether, by their necessary operation, they will interfere with the performance by the Union Pacific Railway Company of the duty imposed upon it by the act of 1888. Looking first at the agreement of October 1, 1866, between the Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division, and the Western Union Telegraph Company, it will be seen that the Western Union Telegraph Company does not, in that agreement, expressly undertake to meet the obligations imposed by the Pacific Railroad acts upon the railroad companies named in them, of constructing, maintaining and operating both a railroad and telegraph line, on their respective routes, for the use equally of the government and the public. It does undertake to perform, without charge to the railway company, what should be "decided by competent authority" to be the telegraphic obligations of the railroad company to the government. Sec. 10. Whom the parties regarded as competent to United States v. Railway & Telegraph Cos. decide as to the nature and extent of such obligations, does not appear from the agreement. The effect of this stipulation, as between the railway company and the telegraph company, was to excuse the latter from performing any services for the government, until competent authority decided that such service was due from the former. But passing this point, as one not controlling in the case, it is evident that the effect, if not the object, of the agreement was to give the telegraph company the absolute control of all telegraphic business on the route of the Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division. The provision that the railway company should transport for the telegraph company, free of charge, all the persons engaged, and material required, in the construction, repairing and maintaining the telegraph line for which the agreement provided, while exacting from other telegraph companies, for persons engaged and for property intended to be used, in building a telegraph line on the railway company's roadway, the usual rates for passengers and freight, secs. 4, 5; the stipulation that the railway company should not give permission to another telegraph company to construct or operate any telegraph line upon the lands or roadway of the railway company, without the consent in writing of the telegraph company, sec. 5; the provision that the railway company should not, without the consent of the telegraph company, transmit commercial or paid business from any station where the latter had an office; and the provision that the railway company should account for and pay over to the telegraph company, at the tariff rates established by the latter, all sums received by the railway company for messages sent from points where the telegraph company had no separate office, if such sums were not sufficient to meet the expenses of a separate telegraph office, sec. 8-these provisions, to say nothing of others, all plainly indicate that the object of |