47 Vt. 20 | Vt. | 1874
The opinion of the court was delivered by
The persons petitioning both the selectmen and the county court, were freeholders of the town of Westfield, and they were asking to have a highway laid out within that town.. The commissioners, for the cause prescribed by the siatute, laid out the highway asked for. It is shown by the report “ that the only land or premises interested in the construction of the road, lie in the town of Troy.” It is claimed that this fact excludes the case from the scope and operation of the statute authorizing and providing for the laying out of highways by the present proceeding. We have not been pointed to, nor have wo discovered, any specific provision to this effect. If such result is to be asserted and maintained, it must be by construction, and by deduction from provisions of the statute in other respects, touching the laying out of highways. “The convenience of the inhabitants and the public good,” constitute the -occasion and the final cause of the laying out, expressed in §1, ch. 24, Gen. Sts. In § 21, the ground is specified on which the selectmen are to act in the given case, viz : “ If they shall judge the public good, or the necessity or convenience of individuals, shall require such highway to be laid out,” &c. The ground of action is the same when the case proceeds in the county court. Now it is to be noticed that the statute does not designate where persons shall be located, in order to enable them to help constitute the public whose good may constitute cause and occasion for laying out a proposed highway. Nor does it define any required location of individuals whose necessity or convenience shall require the road to be laid out. It only defines what condition of persons may be proper petitioners, and in what town the proposed road is to be located. It is quite conceivable, and perhaps this case may illustrate, that sometimes the public whose good is to be served, and the individuals whose necessity or convenience is to be ministered to, may require a highway out
The remarks of Judge Redfield towards the close of the opinion in Paine v. Leicester, 22 Vt. 40-41, may properly be commended to renewed attention.
Judgment affirmed.