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extended, in the same direction, from the south line of lot 21 near the company's round-house and machine shops. The determination of the title of the company will involve a consideration of its right to construct, for its own business, as well as for public convenience, wharves, piers and docks in the harbor.

We agree with the court below that, to a clear understanding of the numerous questions presented in this case, it was necessary to trace the history of the title to the several parcels of land claimed by the company. And the court, in its elaborate opinion, (33 Fed. Rep. 730,) for that purpose referred to the legislation of the United States and of the State, and to ordinances of the city and proceedings thereunder, and stated, with great minuteness of detail, every material provision of law and every step taken. We have with great care gone over the history detailed and are satisfied with its entire accuracy. It would, therefore, serve no useful purpose to repeat what is, in our opinion, clearly and fully narrated. In what we may say of the rights of the railroad company, of the State, and of the city, remaining after the legislation and proceedings taken, we shall assume the correctness of that history.

The State of Illinois was admitted into the Union in 1818 on an equal footing with the original States in all respects. Such was one of the conditions of the cession from Virginia of the territory northwest of the Ohio River, out of which the State was formed. But the equality prescribed would have existed if it had not been thus stipulated. There can be no distinction between the several States of the Union in the character of the jurisdiction, sovereignty and dominion which they may possess and exercise over persons and subjects within their respective limits. The boundaries of the State were prescribed by Congress and accepted by the State in its original Constitution. They are given in the bill. It is sufficient for our purpose to observe that they include within their eastern line all that portion of Lake Michigan lying east of the main land of the State and the middle of the lake south of latitude forty-two degrees and thirty minutes.

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It is the settled law of this country that the ownership of and dominion and sovereignty over lands covered by tide waters, within the limits of the several States, belong to the respective States within which they are found, with the consequent right to use or dispose of any portion thereof, when that can be done without substantial impairment of the interest of the public in the waters, and subject always to the paramount right of Congress to control their navigation so far as may be necessary for the regulation of commerce with foreign nations and among the States. This doctrine has been often announced by this court, and is not questioned by counsel of any of the parties. Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 3 How. 212; Weber v. Harbor Commissioners, 18 Wall. 57.

The same doctrine is in this country held to be applicable to lands covered by fresh water in the Great Lakes over which is conducted an extended commerce with different States and foreign nations. These lakes possess all the general characteristics of open seas, except in the freshness of their waters, and in the absence of the ebb and flow of the tide. In other respects they are inland seas, and there is no reason or principle for the assertion of dominion and sovereignty over and ownership by the State of lands covered by tide waters that is not equally applicable to its ownership of and dominion and sovereignty over lands covered by the fresh waters of these lakes. At one time the existence of tide waters was deemed essential in determining the admiralty jurisdiction of courts in England. That doctrine is now repudiated in this country as wholly inapplicable to our condition. In England the ebb and flow of the tide constitute the legal test of the navigability of waters. There no waters are navigable in fact, at least to any great extent, which are not subject to the tide. There, as said in the case of The Genesee Chief, 12 How. 443, 455, "tide water and navigable water are synonymous terms, and tide water, with a few small and unimportant exceptions, meant nothing more than public rivers, as contradistinguished from private ones;" and writers on the subject of admiralty jurisdiction "took the ebb and flow of the tide as the test because it was a convenient one, and more easily determined

Opinion of the Court.

the character of the river. Hence the established doctrine in England, that the admiralty jurisdiction is confined to the ebb and flow of the tide. In other words, it is confined to public navigable waters."

But in this country the case is different. Some of our rivers are navigable for great distances above the flow of the tide; indeed, for hundreds of miles, by the largest vessels used in commerce. As said in the case cited: "There is certainly nothing in the ebb and flow of the tide that makes the waters peculiarly suitable for admiralty jurisdiction, nor anything in the absence of a tide that renders it unfit. If it is a public navigable water, on which commerce is carried on between different States or nations, the reason for the jurisdiction is precisely the same. And if a distinction is made on that account, it is merely arbitrary, without any foundation in reason; and, indeed, would seem to be inconsistent with it."

The Great Lakes are not in any appreciable respect affected by the tide, and yet on their waters, as said above, a large commerce is carried on, exceeding in many instances the entire commerce of States on the borders of the sea. When the reason of the limitation of admiralty jurisdiction in England. was found inapplicable to the condition of navigable waters in this country, the limitation and all its incidents were discarded. So also, by the common law, the doctrine of the dominion over and ownership by the crown of lands within the realm under tide waters is not founded upon the existence of the tide over the lands, but upon the fact that the waters are navigable, tide waters and navigable waters, as already said, being used as synonymous terms in England. The public being interested in the use of such waters, the possession by private individuals of lands under them could not be permitted except by license of the crown, which could alone exercise such dominion over the waters as would insure freedom in their use so far as consistent with the public interest. The doctrine is founded upon the necessity of preserving to the public the use of navigable waters from private interruption and encroachment, a reason as applicable to navigable fresh waters as to waters moved by the tide. We hold, there

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fore, that the same doctrine as to the dominion and sovereignty over and ownership of lands under the navigable waters of the Great Lakes applies, which obtains at the common law as to the dominion and sovereignty over and ownership of lands under tide waters on the borders of the sea, and that the lands are held by the same right in the one case as in the other, and subject to the same trusts and limitations. Upon that theory we shall examine how far such dominion, sovereignty and proprietary right have been encroached upon by the railroad company, and how far that company had, at the time, the assent of the State to such encroachment, and also the validity of the claim which the company asserts of a right to make further encroachments thereon by virtue of a grant from the State in April, 1869.

The city of Chicago is situated upon the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, and includes, with other territory, fractional sections 10 and 15, in township 39 north, range 14 east of the third principal meridian, bordering on the lake, which forms their eastern boundary. For a long time after the organization of the city its harbor was the Chicago River, a small, narrow stream opening into the lake near the centre of the east and west line of section 10, and in it the shipping arriving from other ports of the lake and navigable waters was moored or anchored, and along it were docks and wharves. The growth of the city in subsequent years in population, business and commerce required a larger and more convenient harbor, and the United States, in view of such expansion and growth, commenced the construction of a system of breakwaters and other harbor protections in the waters of the lake in front of the fractional sections mentioned. In the prosecution of this work there was constructed a line of breakwaters or cribs of wood and stone covering the front of the city between the Chicago River and Twelfth street, with openings in the piers or lines of cribs for the entrance and departure of vessels, thus enclosing a large part of the lake for the uses of shipping and commerce, and creating an outer harbor for Chicago. It comprises a space about one mile and one-half in length from north to south, and

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is of a width from east to west varying from one thousand to four thousand feet. As commerce and shipping expand, the harbor will be further extended towards the south, and, as alleged by the amended bill, it is expected that the necessities of commerce will soon require its enlargement so as to include a great part of the entire lake front of the city. It is stated, and not denied, that the authorities of the United States have in a general way indicated a plan for the improvement and use of the harbor which has been enclosed as mentioned, by which a portion is devoted as a harbor of refuge where ships may ride at anchor with security and within protecting walls, and another portion of such enclosure nearer the shore of the lake may be devoted to wharves and piers, alongside of which ships may load and unload and upon which warehouses may be constructed and other structures erected for the convenience of lake commerce.

The case proceeds upon the theory and allegation that the defendant, the Illinois Central Railroad Company, has, without lawful authority, encroached, and continues to encroach, upon the domain of the State, and its original ownership and control of the waters of the harbor and of the lands thereunder, upon a claim of rights acquired under a grant from the State and ordinance of the city to enter the city and appropriate land and water two hundred feet wide in order to construct a track for a railway, and to erect thereon warehouses, piers and other structures in front of the city, and upon a claim of riparian rights acquired by virtue of ownership of lands originally bordering on the lake in front of the city. It also proceeds against the claim asserted by the railroad company of a grant by the State, in 1869, of its right and title to the submerged lands, constituting the bed of Lake Michigan lying east of the tracks and breakwater of the company, for the distance of one mile, and between the south line. of the south pier extended eastwardly and a line extended in the same direction from the south line of lot twenty-one south of and near the machine shops and round-house of the company; and of a right thereby to construct at its pleasure, in the harbor, wharves, piers and other works for its use.