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electricity, cable, or compressed air, upon obtaining the consent of the Board of Public Works. The telephone business was not among the probabilities when the streets of Cincinnati now made use of by the Telegraph Association were dedicated or condemned for the public use. The primary and dominant purpose of their establishment was to facilitate travel and transportation; they belong from side to side and end to end to the- public, that the public may enjoy the right of travelling and transport of their goods over them. The telephone poles and wires and other appliances are not among the original and primary objects for which streets are opened, for they may be placed elsewhere than on the highways and yet accomplish their purpose. In Taggart v. Street Eailway Company, 16 E. 1., it was said (Durfee, C.J.,) that telephone poles and wires are not used to facilitate the use of the streets for travel and transportation : " Whereas the poles and wires of the Eailway Company are directly ancillary to the use of the streets as such, in that they communicate the power by which the street-cars are propelled." As a general rule, an occupation of the streets otherwise than for travel and transportation is presumptively inferior and subservient to the dominant easement of the public for highway purposes, for if not so, the primary object of their dedication or appropriation might be largely defeated. And the fact that permission is granted to occupy the streets or highways for a purpose other than travel, does not confer a prior and paramount right to occupy them to the exclusion of their use for travel in a mode different from what obtained when such permission was given. To those improved agencies, devised for the convenience and advantage of the community in general, the franchise of the Telephone Company to occupy the streets for carrying on its business must be secondary and subordinate. Whether all who go upon the streets shall have the most convenient and expeditious passage and carriage of persons and goods, has not been made dependent upon the manner in which the defendant in error has preferred to locate its poles, stretch its telephone wires, or form the electric circuit. It is in recognition and maintenance of the superior easement of the public in the streets that City Councils are required to "cause the same to be kept open and in repair and free from nuisance"; that the streets are graded and paved and proper regulations of police provided to govern the actions of persons using them ; that the abutting owner, though having a peculiar interest and easement in the adjacent street appendant to his lot, has no right to place permanent obstructions in the street, nor do any act on his own land outside the limits of the street that will make the way inconvenient or hazardous or less secure than it was left by the municipal authorities. This paramount easement or estate which the public acquires in the streets carry with it a special interest in the adoption of the most approved systems of modern street travel, cannot be made subservient to the telegraph or telephone when admitted on the highway, without the clearest expression of the legislative will. The demand made by the Telegraph Association is not that the Eailway Company shall so modify its existing electrical apparatus as not to interfere with the telephone service, but shall for ever abandon the use of an essential part of its electro-motive system, or be perpetually enjoined. In other words, the Association claims the exclusive use of the grounded circuit, inasmuch as the mechanism of the telephone is so complex, and the electric currents employed so delicate and sensitive, that they cannot be used without disturbance from the heavier currents employed by neighbouring electrical enterprises that operate with the grounded circuit. We find no foundation for such an exclusive franchise or right. When the Telegraph Association began its operations under the telephone system, neither the statute authorising it to erect and maintain poles, wires, and other necessary fixtures, nor the Ordinance under which it obtained the power to extend its lines in the streets, gave an exclusive right either to use the earth for a return circuit or a complete metallic circuit formed by double wires. The Legislature did not grant the right by general enactment, nor was the Municipal Corporation empowered by the Legislature to give the Telegraph Association the exclusive right to make use of its streets so as to create a monopoly. It is contended, however, that the defendant in error, by virtue of its grants, acquired, before the Eailway Company had a right to use electricity as a motive-power, a vested interest in the telephone system as it now operates it, with a grounded circuit, and that not even the Legislature of the State could take away from it or injure this franchise, on the faith of which it has expended its capital and labour. Special privileges or immunities are under the control of the Legislature. If granted, they may be altered, revoked, or repealed by the General Assembly (Article 1, section 2of the Constitution). And while corporations with valuable franchises may be formed under general laws, all such laws may, from time to time, be altered or repealed (Constitution, Article 13, section 2). In view of these constitutional provisions, it is clearly within the power of the General Assembly to authorise one class of corporations to use, in the streets, electricity with the grounded circuit as a motive-power, and another class to employ the same or a similar agency for the transmission of telegraphic or telephonic messages. And, if the proper exercise of the rights granted to the one class under general law is irreconcilable and plainly interferes with a prior grant to a corporation of the other class, it may be construed as the intention of the Legislature to deny an exclusive franchise, if not to repeal the antecedent grant. It is contended, however, in behalf of the defendant in error, that conceding the Eailway Company and Telegraph Association to be upon an equal footing on the steets and highways in the enjoyment of their respective franchises, the company is bound to conform to the rule sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas. In the view which we take of the relation to each other of the parties to the action, we deem it unnecessary to inquire whether there has been a want of conformity, and to what extent, if any, on the part of the Eailway Company, to the requirements of the legal maxim. Nor do we think it necessary to determine how far an incorporated company making a lawful and careful use of its own property, or of a franchise granted to it by the proper municipal authorities, may be held liable for damages incidentally caused to another.