William Johnson

“ As a member of a corporation, a government never exercises its sovereignty. It acts merely as a corporator, and exercises no other power in the management of the affairs of the corporation, than are expressly given by the incorporating act.'
To which it may be added, that if a state did exercise any other power in or over a bank, or impart to it its sovereign attributes, it would be hardly possible to distinguish the issue of the paper of such banks from a direct issue of bills of credit ”

“ On the subject of an interest in the stock of a bank, the language of this Court, in the case cited, is this. 'It is, we think, a sound principle, that when a government becomes a partner in any trading company, it divests itself, so far as concerns the transactions of that company, of its sovereign character, and takes that of a private citizen. Instead of communicating to the company its privileges and its prerogatives, it descends to a level with those with whom it associates itself, and takes the character which belongs to its associates, and to the business which is to be transacted. ”

“ But on this subject the majority of the Court are of opinion that the bank put its own construction on the sufficiency of the demand and the meaning of their cashier's certificate, when they tendered, upon its presentation, all that they admitted to be due upon it.
The other point has relation to the form of the bills, which are made payable to individuals or bearer, concerning which individuals there is no averment of citizenship and which therefore may have been payable, in the first instance, to parties not competent to sue in the courts of the United States. ”