In Stone v. Mississippi (1879) 101 U.S. 814, the Supreme Court permitted prosecution of a state-chartered corporation for conducting a lottery in violation of state law even though the company's charter, issued before the law was enacted, expressly authorized that activity. In reaching its conclusion, the court made the identical distinction found in United States Trust between a public contract impacted by a state's exercise of its police powers and one involving use of its revenue and spending powers. The court first noted that the law at issue was an appropriate exercise of the state's police powers: "When the government is untrammeled by any claim of vested rights or chartered privileges, no one has ever supposed that lotteries could not lawfully be suppressed . . . ." ( Id. at p. 818.) The court then dismissed the corporation's claim that its corporate charter was a contract with the state that was impermissibly impaired by the law banning lotteries, holding that "the contracts which the Constitution protects are those that relate to property rights, not governmental." ( Id. at p. 820.) "We have held . . . that this clause the contract clause protected a corporation in its charter exemptions from taxation. . . . But the power of governing is a trust committed by the people to the government, no part of which can be granted away. . . . They may create corporations, and give them, so to speak, a limited citizenship; but as citizens, limited in their privileges, or otherwise, these creatures of the government creation are subject to such rules and regulations as may from time to time be ordained and established for the preservation of health and morality." (Ibid.)