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State and to limit State taxes; to annul certain grants of State aid; to prohibit the modification, novation, or extension of any contract heretofore made for State aid; to provide for the receipt of certain warrants for certain taxes; and to repeal all conflicting laws."

By this act the governor, lieutenant-governor, auditor, treasurer, secretary of state, and speaker of the House of Representatives, and a seventh person to be selected by them, called a fiscal agent, were constituted a board of liquidation, and were authorized to issue bonds of the State, to be called consolidation bonds, payable in forty years, with interest at seven per cent, and to exchange them for valid outstanding bonds and auditor's warrants at the rate of sixty cents on the dollar. The interest was to be payable semi-annually, on the first of January and July of each year; and for it coupons were to be annexed to the bonds.

The act levied an annual tax of five and a half mills on the dollar of the assessed value of all real and personal property in the State, and declared that it should be collected for the purpose of paying the principal and interest of the consolidated bonds, and that the revenue derived therefrom was thereby "set apart and appropriated for that purpose, and no other,” and that it should be a felony for the fiscal agent or any officer of the State or of the board of liquidation to divert the fund from its legitimate channel. It also declared that this tax, which is called an interest tax, "shall be a continuing annual tax until the said consolidated bonds shall be paid or redeemed, principal and interest; and the said appropriation shall be a continuing annual appropriation during the same period, and this levy and appropriation shall authorize and make it the duty of the auditor and treasurer, and the said board respectively, to collect said tax annually, and pay said interest and redeem the said bonds until the same shall be fully discharged."

One section also provided "that any judge, tax-collector, or any officer of the State obstructing the execution of this act, or any part of it, or failing to perform his official duty thereunder, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by imprisonment not exceeding five years and by fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, at the discretion of the court."

Another section enacted that each provision of the act should be, and it was declared to be, "a contract between the State of Louisiana and each and every holder of the bonds" issued under the act.

But, as though this act was not of itself a sufficient assurance of the unalterable purpose of the State to fulfil the promise it contained, an amendment to her Constitution was proposed and adopted, of which the following is the first section:

"The issue of consolidated bonds, authorized by the General Assembly of the State, at its regular session in the year 1874, is hereby declared to create a valid contract between the State and each and every holder of said bonds, which the State shall by no means and in no wise impair. The said bonds shall be a valid obligation of the State in favor of any holder thereof, and no court shall enjoin the payment of the principal or interest thereof, or the levy and collection of the tax therefor; to secure such levy, collection, and payment, the judicial power shall be exercised when necessary. The tax required for the payment of the principal and interest of said. bonds shall be assessed and collected each and every year, until the bonds shall be paid, principal and interest, and the proceeds shall be paid by the treasurer of the State to the holders of said bonds, as the principal and interest of the same shall fall due, and no further legislation or appropriation shall be requisite for the said assessment and collection, and for such payment from the treasury."

It would puzzle the wit of man to find anywhere in the legislation of the world a more perfect assurance of the fixed purpose of a State to keep faith with her creditors, or of a pledge of a portion of her revenues for their payment, or of the submission of her officers to the compulsory process of the judicial tribunals, if necessary, to carry out her engagements. With the knowledge that the Federal Constitution ordains "that no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts," Louisiana proclaims that each provision of the act shall be and is thereby declared to be a contract between her and each and every holder of the bonds issued under the act. And the constitutional amendment reiterates substantially the same thing by declaring that the issue of the consolidated bonds

created a valid contract between the State and each and every holder of said bonds, "which the State shall by no means and in no wise impair."

Under this act and the constitutional amendment, obliga tions of the State amounting to over $12,000,000 were surrendered, and bonds taken for sixty per cent of their amount, which are held all over the country. The complainants in the injunction suit, and the petitioners for the mandamus, hold for themselves and others, whom they represent, $900,000 of the bonds. The interest on them has not been paid, and yet a portion of the tax levied to meet such interest has been collected, and is now in the hands of the treasurer of the State, one of the board of liquidation. The amount is admitted to be about $300,000, and as collections were making when this admission was given, there is now probably a much larger amount in his hands. In both suits it is alleged that the treasurer and other officers of the State intend to use the funds thus collected for other purposes than the payment of the interest. In one of them an injunction is asked against such a perversion of the funds. In the other a mandamus is asked to compel the application of the funds to the payment of the interest, and also the collection of the taxes authorized by the act of 1874, and the constitutional amendment of that year, to meet further interest as it shall become due.

Why should not both these prayers be granted?

The only answer offered is, that in 1879 Louisiana adopted a new Constitution, which reduced the interest on the consolidated bonds to two per cent per annum for five years, to three per cent for fifteen years afterwards, and to four per cent thereafter, with a proviso that the holders of the bonds might take new bonds for seventy-five per cent on the dollar, drawing four per cent interest.

The new Constitution also directed that the coupon of the consolidated bonds falling due Jan. 1, 1880, should be remitted, and that the interest taxes collected for its payment should be transferred to defray the expenses of the State government. The change in the rate of interest and the remission of the coupon falling due Jan. 1, 1880, were made

without the consent of the bondholders, or any consultation with them. Of course the new Constitution, in these provisions, is a repudiation of the engagements of the act of 1874 and of the constitutional amendment of that year, and is a direct violation of the inhibition of the Federal Constitution against the impairment of the obligation of contracts.

Is this inhibition against the repudiation by the State of her engagements of any efficacy? The majority of the court answer No. I answer, adhering to the doctrines taught by a long line of illustrious judges preceding me, "Yes, it is;" and though now denied, I feel confident that at no distant day its power will be reasserted and maintained. In that faith I dissent from the judgment of my associates, and I shall continue to do so on all proper occasions, until the prohibition inserted in the Constitution as a barrier against the agrarian and despoiling spirit, which both precedes and follows a breach of public faith, is restored to its original vigor.

The question whether the court will restrain the diversion of the funds in the hands of the treasurer, a member of the board of liquidation, is to be considered precisely as though the new Constitution had never been adopted. The inhibition of the Federal Constitution is upon the State and not merely upon her legislature. All the authority which her people can confer, whether by constitutional enactment or legislative provision, is subject to the inhibition. Her people are at all times under the Constitution of the United States, subject to its restrictions as they are entitled to its privileges. They cannot lawfully. insert in any constitution or organic law provisions contravening that instrument. They cannot authorize their legislature to pass a bill of attainder, or an ex post facto law, or a law impairing the obligation of contracts, nor can they embody in their Constitution clauses amounting to or operating as such enactments. Any such authority or clauses would be treated as nugatory and futile by all tribunals holding that the Constitution of the United States is, what on its face it is declared to be, the supreme law of the land. Therefore, the new Constitution of Louisiana stands before us, with respect to her past contracts, with no greater weight than would a legislative enactment containing similar provisions; and what the State

authorizes to be done by her judicial tribunals against her officers, in the collection of the tax and the application of the moneys raised for the payment of the interest on the bonds, can be done by the judicial tribunals of the Federal government when a case is transferred to them from a State court.

If the new Constitution had never been adopted, there could be no question as to the power of the State courts to require that the moneys collected be applied to the payment of the interest. It would not only have been the duty of the board of liquidation to thus apply them, but it would have been a felony to refuse to do so. Now, whatever enactment, constitutional or legislative, impairs the obligation of the contract with the bondholders, that is, abrogates or lessens the means of its enforcement, is void. Therefore, the new Constitution, as to that contract, is to be treated as though it never existed. As said by this court, without a dissenting voice, only two years ago, in Wolff v. New Orleans: "Legislation producing this latter result (impairment of the obligation of a contract by abrogating or lessening the means of its enforcement), not indirectly as a consequence of legitimate measures taken, as will sometimes happen, but directly by operating upon those means, is prohibited by the Constitution, and must be disregarded, treated as though never enacted, by all courts recognizing the Constitution as the paramount law of the land.” 103 U. S. 358, 365.

And again, in the same case: "The prohibition of the Constitution against the passage of laws impairing the obligation of contracts applies to the contracts of the State, and to those of its agents acting under its authority, as well as to contracts between individuals. And that obligation is impaired, in the sense of the Constitution, when the means by which a contract at the time of its execution could be enforced, that is, by which the parties could be obliged to perform it, are rendered less efficacious by legislation operating directly upon those means." Id. 367.

No reason in law, therefore, any more than in morals, can be given why the mandates of the act of 1874 and the constitutional amendment of that year should not be carried out. There is nothing in the fact that the defendants are officers of

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