Benjamin R. Curtis

“ When it has become insolvent, it has lost all that fund, and has nothing belonging to its stockholders. In some sense a bank may be said to be indebted to its stockholders for the capital they have paid in. With the leave of the State, they have a right to withdraw it, after all debts are paid, and, if the State is itself the sole stockholder, it may withdraw its capital while any of it shall remain. But, from the very nature of things, it cannot withdraw capital from an insolvent bank, because it has none of their capital remaining. When insolvent, its assets belong solely to its creditors. ”

“ It is well known that the power of the several States to create corporations, to issue bills, and transact business for the sole benefit of the State which appointed the corporate officers, and was alone interested in the bank, has been from time to time seriously questioned. ”

“ If a law which withdrew assets of the bank to pay bonds sold to raise its capital, impaired the obligation of the complainant's contracts, it would probably not be supposed that a law applying such assets to pay bonds of the State sold to raise capital for another bank, could be free from that objection.
It only remains to consider the third question: whether it appears by the record that the Supreme Court of Arkansas held these laws to be valid, and by reason thereof dismissed the complainant's bill. ”

“ If a private person had received assets of the bank in the same manner they are alleged in the bill to have been received by the State, he must have been held amenable to the complainants as a creditor of the bank, in a court of equity. ”

“ It is no answer that the acts of Kentucky now in question, are regulations of the remedy and not of the right to the lands. If these acts so change the nature and extent of existing remedies as materially to impair the rights and interests of the owner, they are just as much a violation of the compact as if they directly overturned his rights and interests. ”

“ Indeed it has not been attempted to maintain, that such a law, operating on the property of a mere private corporation, whose charter the legislature could not repeal, would be valid. But it is argued that this is a different case. ”

“ That a State, by becoming interested with others in a banking corporation, or by owning all the capital stock, does not impart to that corporation any of its privileges or prerogatives, that it lays down its sovereignty, so far as respects the transactions of the corporation, and exercises no power or privilege in respect to those transactions not derived from the charter, has been repeatedly affirmed by this court, in the Bank of the United States v. ”