Horace Gray

“ If, as it is more reasonable to suppose, congress did have corporations in mind, it must be presumed also to have had in mind the law, as long and uniformly declared by this court, that, within the meaning of the previous acts of congress giving jurisdiction of suits between citizens of different states, a corporation could not be considered a citizen or a resident of a state in which it had not been incorporated. ”

“ In the case of a corporation, the reasons are, to say the least, quite as strong for holding that it can sue and be sued only in the state and district in which it has been incorporated, or in the state of which the other party is a citizen. ”

“ The word 'inhabitant,' in that act, was apparently used, not in any larger meaning than 'citizen,' but to avoid the incongruity of speaking of a citizen of anything less than a state, when the intention was to cover not only a district which included a whole state, but also two districts in one state, like the districts of Maine and Massachusetts in the state of Massachusetts, and the districts of Virginia and Kentucky in the state of Virginia, established by section 2 of the same act. ”