494 



LOUISIANA. 



against one of the United States by citizens of 

 another State, or by citizens and subjects of 

 any foreign state." He then says : 



Under the operation of this amendment the actual 

 owners of the bonds and coupons held by New Hamp- 

 shire and New York are precluded from prosecuting 

 these suits in their own names. The real question, 

 therefore, is whether they can sue in the name of 

 their respective States after getting the consent of the 

 State ; or, to put it in another way, whether a State 

 can allow the use of its name in such suit for the 

 benefit of one of its citizens. The language of the 

 amendment is in effect that the judicial power of the 

 United States shall not extend to any suit commenced 

 or prosecuted by citizens of one State against another 

 State. No one can look at the pleadings and testi- 

 mony in these cases without being satisfied beyond 

 all doubt that they were in legal eifect commenced 

 and are prosecuted solely by the owners of the bonds 

 and coupons. The State and Attorney-General are 

 only nominal actors in the proceeding. The bond- 

 owner, whoever he may be, is the promoter and man- 

 ager of the suit. He pays the expenses, is the only 

 one authorized to conclude a compromise, and if any 

 money is ever collected it must be paid to him with- 

 out even passing through the form of getting into the 

 treasury of the State. The State is nothing more nor 

 less than a mere collecting agent of the owners of the 

 bonds and coupons, and, while the suits are in the 

 name of States, they are under the control of individ- 

 ual citizens, and arc prosecuted and carried on alto- 

 gether by and for them. 



It is contended, however, that notwithstanding the 

 prohibition of the amendment the States may prose- 

 cute the suits because, as " ' sovereign and trustee of 

 its citizens,' a State is clothed with the right and 

 faculty of making an imperative demand upon another 

 independent State for payment of debts which it owes 

 to the citizens of the former." There is no doubt but 

 one nation may, if it see fit, demand of another na- 

 tion payment of debts owin^ by the latter to citizens 

 of the former, but States are not nations, either as be- 

 tween themselves or toward foreign nations. They 

 are sovereign within their spheres, but their sover- 

 eignty stops short of nationality. Their political 

 status at home and abroad is that of States in the 

 United States. 



If the citizens themselves had ample means of 

 redress without the intervention of their Government 

 under the Constitution as it was originally construed, 

 the citizen of one State could sue another" State in the 

 courts of the United States for himself' and obtain 

 the same relief that his State could get for him if it 

 should sue. Certainly when he can sue for himself 

 there is no necessity for the power in his State to sue 

 in his behalf, and we can not believe it was intended 

 by the framersof the Constitution to allow both reme- 

 dies in such a case. Therefore the special remedy 

 granted to the citizen himself must be deemed to 

 have been the only remedy a citizen of one State 

 could have under the Constitution against another 

 State for redress of his grievances, except such as the 

 delinquent State saw fit itself to irrant. 

 _ In other words, the giving of direct remedy to the 

 citizen himself was equivalent to taking away any 

 indirect remedy he might otherwise have claimed 

 through the intervention of his State, upon any prin- 

 ciple of the law of nations. It follows that when the 

 amendment took away the special remedy there was 

 no other left ; nothing was added to the Constitution 

 by what was thus done ; no power taken away by the 

 grant of special remedy was restored by the amend- 

 ment. The effect of the amendment was simply to 

 revoke the new right that had been given and leave 

 the limitations to stand as they were. The evident 

 purpose of the amendment was to prohibit all suits 

 against States by or for citizens of other States, or 

 aliens, without the consent of the State to be sued, 

 and in our opinion one State can not create a contro- 



versy with another State within the meaning of that 

 term as used in. the judicial clauses of the Constitution 

 by assuming the prosecution of debts owing "by other 

 States to its citizens. Such bein the case, we are 

 satisfied that we are prohibited both by the letter and 

 spirit of the Constitution from entertaining these suits, 

 and the bill in each of them is dismissed. 



The two cases of Elliott and others against 

 the Treasurer and Auditor of the State of 

 Louisiana were a suit in equity and one for a 

 mandamus to compel the executive officers of 

 the State to comply with the contract between 

 the State and the bondholders, made in 1874 

 that is, to go on collecting the 5 mills for the 

 debt fund, which was authorized by the pre- 

 vious Constitution, without any special levy by 

 the Legislature. It also put at issue the valid- 

 ity of the provision of the debt ordinance of 

 1879, which remitted the January interest of 

 that year on State consols, and turned over 

 the money collected to the general fund. 



Among the more important parts of Chief- 

 Justice Waite's opinion are the following : 



It is clear that it was the intention of the State of 

 Louisiana to enter into a formal contract with the 

 holders of the bonds issued under the act of 1874, to 

 levy and collect an annual tax of five and a half mills 

 on the dollar of assessed value of all real and personal 

 property in the State, arid to apply the revenue de- 

 rived therefrom to the payment of the principal and 

 interest of the bonds, ancf to no other purpose. It is 

 equally clear that the object of the State in adopting 

 the debt ordinance in 1879 was to stop the further 

 levy of the promised tax, and to prevent the disburs- 

 ing officers from using the revenue from previous 

 levies to pay the interest falling due in January, 1880, 

 as well as the principal and interest falling due there- 

 after. That the Constitution of 1879, on its face, takes 

 away the power of the executive officers to comply 

 with the terms of the act of 1874 can not be denied, 

 as against everything but the outstanding bonds and 

 coupons. This Constitution is the fundamental law 

 of the State, and it is only invalid so far as it impairs 

 the obligation of contracts, on the faith of which the 

 bonds' and coupons were taken by their respective 

 holders. The question, then, is whether the con- 

 tract can be enforced, notwithstanding the Constitu- 

 tion, by coercing the agents and instrumentalities of 

 the State, whose authority has been withdrawn in 

 violation of contract, without having the State itself 

 in its political capacity a party to the proceedings ; 

 the relief asked will require the officers against whom 

 the process goes to act contrary to the positive orders 

 of the supreme political power of the State, whose 

 creatures they > are, and to which they are ultimately 

 responsible in law for what they do. They must use 

 the public money in the treasury and under their con- 

 trol in one way, when the supreme power has directed 

 them to use it in another, and they must raise more 

 money by taxation, when the same power has declared 

 that it sliall not be done. 



The remedy sought by the bondholders implies 

 power in the judiciary to compel the State to abide by 

 and perform its contracts for the payment of money, 

 not by rendering and enforcing a Judgment in any 

 ordinary form of judicial procedure, but by assuming 

 control" of the administration of the fiscal affairs of 

 the State to the extent that may be necessary to ac- 

 complish the end in view. In the opinion of this 

 court the judiciary has not this power. It is insisted, 

 however, that the money already in the treasury col- 

 lected from the ta^ levied for the year 1879 consti- 

 tutes a trust fund of which individual defendants are 

 ex-ofiicio trustees, and that they may be enjoined as 

 such trustees from diverting it from the purpose to 

 which it was pledged under contract. But the indi- 



