as heretofore established, went to the very verge of judicial power. That doctrine began, as we have seen, in the assumption that State corporations were composed of citizens of the State which created them; but such assumption was one of fact, and was the subject of allegation and traverse, and thus the jurisdiction of the Federal courts might be defeated. Then, after a long contest in this court, it was settled that the presumption of citizenship is one of law, not to be defeated by allegation or evidence to the contrary. There we are content to leave it.

It should be observed that, in the present case, the corporation defendant was not incorporated as such by the State of Arkansas. The legislation of that State was professedly dealing with the railroad corporation of other States. The Constitution of Arkansas provides that "foreign corporations may be authorized to do business in this State under such limitations and restrictions as may be prescribed by law," but "they shall not have power to condemn or appropriate private property."

Section 5 of the act of March 16, 1881, as shown in the preliminary statement, provides that "any railroad company incorporated by or under the laws of any other State, and having a line of railroad built, or partly built, to or near any boundary of this State, and desiring to continue its line of railroad into or through this State, or any branch thereof, may, for the purpose of acquiring the right to build its line of railroad, lease or purchase the property, rights, privileges, lands, tenements, immunities, and franchises of any railroad company organized under the laws of this State, which said lease or purchase shall carry with it the right of eminent domain held and acquired by said company at the time of lease or sale, and thereafter hold, use, maintain, build, construct, own, and operate the said railroad so leased or purchased as fully and to the same extent as the company organized under the laws of this State might or could have done; and the rights and powers of such company, and its corporate name, may be held and used by such foreign railroad company as will best subserve its purpose and the building of said line of railroad. . . . In all other matters said foreign railroad company shall be subject to all the provisions of all acts in relation to railroads, the liabilities and forfeitures thereby imposed, and may sue and be sued in the same manner as other railroad corporations, and subject to the same service of process, and shall keep an office or offices in said State as required by . . . the Constitution of this State."

It was under the provisions of this section that the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway Company, in 1882, purchased from corporations of Arkansas the railroad already built by them extending from the southern boundary of Missouri to Fort Smith in Arkansas. These Arkansas corporations have since maintained their separate organizations as corporations of that State, but do not operate railroads. It is, therefore, obvious that such purchase by the Missouri corporation

of the railroad and franchises of the Arkansas companies did not convert it into an Arkansas corporation. The terms of the statute show that it merely granted rights and powers to an existing foreign corporation, which was to continue to exist as such, subject only to certain conditions - among others that of keeping an office in the State,

so as to be subject to process of the Arkansas courts.

It is true that by the subsequent act of 1889, by the proviso to the second section, it was provided that every railroad corporation of any other State, which had theretofore leased or purchased any railroad in Arkansas, should, within sixty days from the passage of the act, file a certified copy of its articles of incorporation or charter with the Secretary of State, and shall thereupon become a corporation of Arkansas, anything in its articles of incorporation or charter to the contrary notwithstanding; and it appears that the defendant company did accordingly file a copy of its articles of incorporation with the secretary of the State. But whatever may be the effect of such legislation, in the way of subjecting foreign railroad companies to control and regulation by the local laws of Arkansas, we cannot concede that it availed to create an Arkansas corporation out of a foreign corporation in such a sense as to make it a citizen of Arkansas within the meaning of the Federal Constitution so as to subject it as such to a suit by a citizen of the State of its origin. In order to bring such an artificial body as a corporation within the spirit and letter of that Constitution, as construed by the decisions of this court, it would be necessary to create it out of natural persons, whose citizenship of the State creating it could be imputed to the corporation itself. But it is not pretended in the present case that natural persons, resident in and citizens of Arkansas, were by the legislation in question created a corporation, and that therefore the citizenship of the individual corporators is imputable to the corporation.

It is further contended, on behalf of the defendant in error, the plaintiff below, that, as the plaintiff described herself as a citizen of Missouri, and the defendant company as a citizen of Arkansas, and as the cause of action, though arising in Missouri, was transitory in its nature, jurisdiction was thus formally conferred upon the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Arkansas, and that the only question left for inquiry was whether the defendant company, alleged to be a citizen of Arkansas, was legally responsible for the conduct of the Missouri company of the same name, and such responsibility is supposed to be found in the fact that the railroad running through both States was under the common management of both companies.

But even if it be admitted that a common management of a railroad running through two States, and participation in its earnings and losses, by two companies, might make both responsible, jointly and severally, for a tortious cause of action, and that such cause of action might be maintained in the courts of either State, the question of the

jurisdiction of the Federal court still remains. The defendant was not content to leave that question to be decided by the plaintiff's allegations, but pleaded that it was in law a corporation of the State of Missouri, and that, therefore, an action could not be maintained. against it, in the Federal court, by a citizen of that State. In other words, the defendant company claimed that, while it had voluntarily subjected itself to the laws of Arkansas, as interpreted and enforced by the courts of that State, it still remained a corporation of the State of Missouri, disabled from suing or being sued by a citizen of that State in a Federal court, and that such disability was not and could not be removed by State legislation.

The result of these views is that we answer the second question put to us by the Circuit Court of Appeals in the negative, and to render it unnecessary to answer the other questions.1

SECTION II.-EXERCISE OF JURISDICTION.

a. Original in Supreme Court.

[SEE Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738, supra, p. 617; Börs v. Preston, 111 U. S. 252, supra, p. 628; United States v. Texas, 143 U. S. 621, supra, p. 676; Ames v. Kansas, 111 U. S. 449, supra, p. 686; Wisconsin v. Pelican Ins. Co., 127 U. S. 265, supra, p. 692 ; and Ex parte Vallandigham, 1 Wall. 243, infra, p. 763.]

b. Appellate.

MARTIN v. HUNTER'S LESSEE.

1 Wheaton, 304; 3 Curtis, 562. 1816.

STORY, J., delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a writ of error from the Court of Appeals of Virginia, founded upon the refusal of that court to obey the mandate of this court, requiring the judgment rendered in this very cause, at February term, 1813, to be carried into due execution. The following is the judgment of the Court of Appeals rendered on the mandate: "The court is unanimously of opinion, that the appellate power of

1 MR. JUSTICE HARLAN delivered a dissenting opinion.

the Supreme Court of the United States does not extend to this court, under a sound construction of the Constitution of the United States; that so much of the 25th section of the act of Congress to establish the judicial courts of the United States, as extends the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to this court, is not in pursuance of the Constitution of the United States; that the writ of error in this cause was improvidently allowed under the authority of that act; that the proceedings thereon in the Supreme Court were coram non judice, in relation to this court, and that obedience to its mandate be declined by the court."

The questions involved in this judgment are of great importance and delicacy. Perhaps it is not too much to affirm, that, upon their right decision, rest some of the most solid principles which have. hitherto been supposed to sustain and protect the Constitution itself. The great respectability, too, of the court whose decisions we are called upon to review, and the entire deference which we entertain for the learning and ability of that court, add much to the difficulty of the task which has so unwelcomely fallen upon us. It is, however, a source of consolation that we have had the assistance of most able and learned arguments to aid our inquiries; and that the opinion which is now to be pronounced has been weighed with every solicitude to come to a correct result, and matured after solemn deliberation.

Before proceeding to the principal questions, it may not be unfit to dispose of some preliminary considerations which have grown out of the arguments at the bar.

The Constitution of the United States was ordained and established, not by the States in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the Constitution declares, by "the people of the United States." There can be no doubt that it was competent to the people to invest the general government with all the powers which they might deem proper and necessary; to extend or restrain these powers according to their own good pleasure, and to give them a paramount and supreme authority. As little doubt can there be that the people had a right to prohibit to the States the exercise of any powers which were, in their judgment, incompatible with the objects of the general compact; to make the powers of the State governments, in given cases, subordinate to those of the nation, or to reserve to themselves those sovereign authorities which they might not choose to delegate to either. The Constitution was not, therefore, necessarily carved out of existing State sovereignties, nor a surrender of powers already existing in State institutions, for powers of the States depend upon their own constitutions; and the people of every State had the right to modify and restrain them, according to their own views of policy or principle. On the other hand, it is perfectly clear that the sovereign powers vested in the State governments, by their respective constitutions, remained unal

the

tered and unimpaired, except so far as they were granted to the government of the United States.

These deductions do not rest upon general reasoning, plain and obvious as they seem to be. They have been positively recognized by one of the articles in amendment of the Constitution, which declares that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The government, then, of the United States, can claim no powers which are not granted to it by the Constitution, and the powers actually granted must be such as are expressly given, or given by necessary implication. On the other hand, this instrument, like every other grant, is to have a reasonable construction, according to the import of its terms; and where a power is expressly given in general terms, it is not to be restrained to particular cases, unless' that construction grows out of the context expressly, or by necessary implication. The words are to be taken in their natural and obvious sense, and not in a sense unreasonably restricted or enlarged.

The Constitution, unavoidably, deals in general language. It did not suit the purposes of the people, in framing this great charter of our liberties, to provide for minute specifications of its powers, or to declare the means by which those powers should be carried into execution. It was foreseen that this would be a perilous and difficult, if not an impracticable, task. The instrument was not intended to provide merely for the exigencies of a few years, but was to endure through a long lapse of ages, the events of which were locked up in the inscrutable purposes of Providence. It could not be foreseen what new changes and modifications of power might be indispensable to effectuate the general objects of the charter; and restrictions and specifications, which at the present might seem salutary, might, in the end, prove the overthrow of the system itself. Hence its powers are expressed in general terms, leaving to the legislature, from time to time, to adopt its own means to effectuate legitimate objects, and to mould and model the exercise of its powers, as its own wisdom and the public interests should require.

With these principles in view, principles in respect to which no difference of opinion ought to be indulged, let us now proceed to the interpretation of the Constitution, so far as regards the great points in controversy.

The third article of the Constitution is that which must principally attract our attention. [Sections 1 and 2 are quoted.]

Such is the language of the article creating and defining the judicial power of the United States. It is the voice of the whole American people solemnly declared, in establishing one great department of that government which was, in many respects, national, and in all supreme. It is a part of the very same instrument which was to act not merely upon individuals, but upon States; and to deprive