“ On this point the bills alleged that the street railway property, on which the taxes were laid and were a special lien, was readily available and amply sufficient to satisfy them; that the city, in acquiring that property, had engaged to pay three-fourths of them; and that with knowledge of these matters the defendants wrongfully and collusively entered into an arrangement to refrain from collecting any part of the taxes out of the street railway property or from the city, and to collect them out of the power and lighting property which was mortgaged to the plaintiffs ”

“ Public agents must be liable to the law, unless they are to be put above the law.'
In Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U.S. 270, 285 et seq., 5 S.C.t. 903, 962, 29 L. Ed. 185, the question presented was whether a suit against a tax collector to recover specific property which he had distrained for a state tax and was proceeding to sell was in substance a suit against the state. Prior to the distraint the plaintiff had tendered in payment of the tax certain coupons from state bonds, and the collector had rejected them as not receivable for the tax. ”