Melville Fuller

“ The rule that every clause in a statute should have effect, and one portion should not be placed in antagonism to another, is well settled; and it is also held that it is the duty of the court to ascertain the meaning of the legislature from the words used and the subject-matter to which the statute relates, and to restrain its operation within narrower limits than its words import if the court is satisfied that the literal meaning of its language would extend to cases which the legislature never intended to include in it. ”

“ The fourth section of the act of congress of March 3, 1887, (24 St. 552,) as corrected by the act of August 13, 1888, (25 St. 433,) is as follows:
'Sec. 4. That all national banking associations established under the laws of the United States shall, for the purposes of all actions by or against them, real, personal, or mixed, and all suits in equity, be deemed citizens of the states in which they are respectively located; and in such cases the circuit and district courts shall not have jurisdiction other than such as they would have in cases between individual citizens of the same state. ”

“ Following section 11 of the judiciary act, the first subdivision of section 629, Rev. St., conferred jurisdiction on the circuit courts of all suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity, where the matter in dispute, exclusive of costs, exceeded the sum or value of $500, and the suit was between a citizen of the state where it was brought and a citizen of another state ”