John Archibald Campbell

“ The fundamental principle of American constitutions, it seems to me, is, that to the people of the several States belongs the resolution of all questions, whether of regulation, compact, or punitive justice, arising out of the action of their municipal government upon their citizens, or depending upon their constitutions and laws, and are judges of the validity of all acts done by their municipal authorities in the exercise of their sovereign rights, in either case without responsibility or control from any department of the federal government. ”

“ They are only ordinary expedients of legislation. The property of individuals is established on a general principle, which seems coeval with civil society itself. But bodies are instruments fabricated by the legislature for a specific purpose, which ought to be preserved while they are beneficial, amended when they are impaired, and rejected when they become useless or injurious.' Vind. Gal. 48, note.
Who, in the United States, is to determine when the public interests demand the suppression of bodies whose existence or modes or action are contrary to the well-being of the state? ”

“ I do not say that a court of chancery will never permit an individual stockholder to come before it to assert a right of the corporation in which he is a shareholder, where there is an obstacle of such a nature that the name of the corporation cannot be employed before legitimate tribunals in their regular modes of proceeding, but the burden is thrown upon the plaintiff to establish the existence of an urgent necessity for such a suit. ”

“ The people of Ohio, by their state constitution, reserved to themselves 'complete power' to 'alter, reform, and abolish their government;' 'to petition for redress of grievances;' and to 'recur, as often as might be necessary, to the first principles of government.' It was by a constitution adopted according to established forms, and expressive of the sovereign will of the body politic, that the rule of taxation complained of in this suit was prescribed. ”

“ Combinations of classes in society, united by the bond of a corporate spirit, for the accumulation of power, influence, or wealth, by the control of intercourse or trade, or the spiritual or moral concerns of society, unquestionably desire limitations upon the sovereignty of the people, and the existence of an authority upon which they can repose in security and confidence. ”

“ A material distinction has always been acknowledged to exist as to the degrees of the authority that a people could legitimately exert over persons and corporations. Individuals are not the creatures of the State, but constitute it. ”

“ If held in trust, it is exempt from forced sales and confiscations, and, on the death of the owner without children, passes to the mosque or other charitable trustee. In that empire, the ecclesiastical and judicial is the dominant interest, for the Ulemas are both priests and lawyers, just as the corporate moneyed interest is dominant in Ohio, and in either country that interest claims exemption from the usual burdens and ordinary legislation of the State. ”

“ The acknowledgment of such a power would be to establish the alarming doctrine that the empire of Ohio, and the remaining States of the Union, over their revenues, is not to be found in their people, but in the numerical majority of the judges of the court. ”

“ The state governments were prohibited from any corresponding legislation, either by their federal or state constitutions.
The power to interfere with private contracts is one of the most delicate and difficult, in its exercise, of any belonging to the social system, and one which there is constant temptation to abuse. That its exercise is sometimes necessary is proved by the history of every civilized State. ”

“ The bank is a corporation and body politic having a separate existence, as a distinct person in law, in whom the whole stock and property of the bank are vested, and to whom all agents, debtors, officers, and servants, are responsible for all contracts, express or implied, made in reference to such capital ”

“ The proportion between the property of corporations and individuals is greater there than in other States, but the property held by corporations in other States is large enough to awaken the most earnest attention. ”

“ Theory proves it to be essential to the social state. Experience proves that it has, in some degree, existed in every age and nation of the world. But those public acts, which form and endow corporations, are subsequent and subordinate. ”

“ I find their principles compendiously declared in an allocution of a minister of Rome to the court of Sardinia, in reference to taxes on church property there. I find that 'religious corporations, forming a portion of the ecclesiastical family at large, are by their very nature, under the guardianship and authority of the church; and, consequently, no measure or laws can be adopted with respect to them, except by the spiritual power, or through its agency, especially in what touches their existence or their conduct in the institutions to which they respectively belong ”

“ Where would the people find a remedy? Let the case before us form an illustration. Congress cannot limit the term nor abolish the privileges of these corporations; they are corporations of Ohio, and beyond her limits they have no legal existence; they live in the contemplation of her laws and dwell in the place of their creation. (13 Pet. 512; 16 How. 314.) Nor can congress enlarge the subjects for state taxation, nor interfere in the support of the state government. They could not empower the State to collect taxes from these corporations. ”

“ The consideration of analogous cases will strengthen this conclusion; cases where courts of chancery are more free to intervene, from the fiduciary relations between the parties and the extent of its general jurisdiction over them. Such are cases of danger to the interests of a creditor of an estate from the collusion of an executor with the debtor of the estate, or the insolvency of the executor; or where an executor wrongfully fails to make a settlement with a surviving partner, and a residuary legatee seeks one entire settlement of the estate against the executor and partner ”

“ They come into society with rights, which cannot be invaded without injustice. But corporations derive their existence from the society, are the offspring of transitory conditions of the State; and, with faculties for good in such conditions, combine durable dispositions for evil. ”

“ This legal result was declared by the national assembly in 1790, to the effect that the public domain, with all its accretions, belonged to the nation; that this property is the most perfect that can be imagined, since their exists no superior power that can restain or modify it; that the power to alienate-the essential attribute of property-exists in the nation; that every appropriation of the public domain is essentially revocable, if made without the consent of the nation ”

“ The case is one between a corporator and the corporation, and the jurisdiction cannot be affirmed unless the court is prepared to answer the question whether a mere legal entity, an artificial person, invisible, intangible, can be a citizen of the United States in the sense in which that word is used in the constitution ”

“ They display a love of power, a preference for corporate interests to moral or political principles or public duties, and an antagonism to individual freedom, which have marked them as objects of jealousy in every epoch of their history. ”

“ It is said by a competent authority, that in the State of Massachusetts there are near twenty-five hundred trading corporations, and that more than seven tenths of the real and personal property of that State is held by corporations. ”

“ The taxes for the year 1852 were collected in current bank bills, and the packages were prepared and placed within the reach of the treasurer, who held the duplicate for collection, by the officers of the bank, and immediately after they were assigned by the bank to one Deshler, who replevied the same by a writ from the circuit court of the United States for Ohio, and thus made a case which subsequently came to this court. ”

“ Nor does the proposition derive strength from the fact that the statute applies only to banking corporations, or corporations confined to a single form of commercial dealing. The proposition would have had the same degree of accuracy if the act had been universal, applicable to all private corporations, whether for manufactures, trade, intercourse, mining, morals, or religion. ”

“ It is necessary to show that they prefer their own interests to their duty, and that they intend to neglect the performance of the obligation incidental to the office imposed upon them, and which they assumed to perform ”