Samuel Freeman Miller

“ Is a statute of a State legislature which, in the act authorizing a city to convert its ownership of a large and valuable property, held for the use of the public, such as this, into the shares of a joint-stock corporation, declares that these shares shall be exempt from judicial sale for the debts of the city, an impairment of the obligation of existing contracts within the meaning of the Constitution? ”

“ Nothing subject to their debt,-not by way of lien, for such debts created no lien, but subject to execution after it might be issued, was withdrawn from that subjection. The shares were evidence of title in property which had never been liable to execution, and the statute continued this exemption in the ownership of these shares so long as it remained in the city.
But it is said that a creditor has, by his contract, the same right to enforce its performance out of property acquired after his debt is created as he had against that which the debtor owned when the contract was made. ”

“ In the first place, the property in question is not other and different property from that held and owned by the city at the time of the contract, and which was then exempt from execution. It has only changed the form and evidence of ownership. The shares represent in the hands of the city the same interest which it had before in the water-works.
In the next place, the city was not situated, as regards this property, as a private person would be in the purchase and acquisition of ordinary property. The city could not have sold this property as the law stood. ”