directs the payment of the remaining sum of $2,000 by the defendants Ralph Osborn and John L. Harper; but that the same is erroneous so far as respects the interest on the coin, part of the said $98,000; it being the opinion of this court that while the parties were restrained by the authority of the circuit court from using it they ought not to be charged with interest. The decree of the circuit court for the district of Ohio is affirmed as to the said sums of $98,000 and $2,000, and reversed as to the residue." The mandate from this court was in accordance with the terms of this judgment.

There is nothing, therefore, in the judgment in that cause, as finally defined, which extends its authority beyond the prevention and restraint of the specific act done in pursuance of the unconstitutional statute of Ohio, and in violation of the act of congress chartering the bank, which consisted of the unlawful seizure and detention of its property. It was conceded throughout that case, in the argument at the bar and in the opinion of the court, that an action at law would lie, either of trespass or detinue, against the defendants as individual trespassers guilty of a wrong in taking the property of the complainant illegally, vainly seeking to defend themselves under the authority of a void act of the general assembly of Ohio. One of the principal questions in the case was whether equity had jurisdiction to restrain the commission of such a mere trespass, a jurisdiction which was upheld upon the circumstances and nature of the case, and which has been repeatedly exercised since. But the very ground on which it was adjuged not to be a suit against the state, and not to be one in which the state was a necessary party, was that the defendants personally and individually were wrong-doers, against whom the complainants had a clear right of action for the recovery of the property taken, or its value, and that, therefore, it was a case in which no other parties were necessary. The right asserted and the relief asked were against the defendants as individuals. They sought to protect themselves against personal liability by their official character as representatives of the state. This they were not permitted to do, because the authority under which they professed to act was void.

In pursuance of the principles adjudged in the case of Osborn v. Bank, supra, it has been repeatedly and uniformly held by this court that an injunction will lie to restrain the collection of taxes sought to be collected by seizures of property imposed in the name of the state, but contrary to the constitution of the United States, the defendants being officers of the state threatening the distraint complained of. The grounds of this jurisdiction were stated in Allen v. Railroad Co., 114 U. S. 311, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 925. The vital principle in all such cases is that the defendants, though professing to act as officers of the state, are threatening a violation of the personal or property rights of the complainant, for which they are personally and individually liable. This principle was plainly stated in the opinion of the court in Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U. S. 270, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 903, as follows, (page 282:) "The case then of the plaintiff below is reduced to this: He had paid the tax demanded of him by a lawful tender. The defendant had no authority of law thereafter to attempt to enforce other payment by seizing his property. In doing so he ceased to be an officer of the law, and became a private wrong-doer. It is the simple case in which the defendant, a natural private person, has unlawfully, with force and arms, seized, taken, and detained the personal property of another." It was also stated, (page 288:) "The ratio decidendi in this class of cases is very plain. A defendant sued as a wrong-doer, who seeks to substitute the state in his place, or to justify by the authority of the state, or to defend on the ground that the state has adopted his act and exonerated him, cannot rest on the bare assertion of his defense. He is bound to establish it. The state is a political corporate body, can act only through agents, and can command only by laws. It is necessary, therefore, for such a defendant, in order to complete his defense, to produce a law of the state which constitutes his com

mission as its agent and a warrant for his act. This the defendant in the present case undertook to do." The legislation under which the defendant justified, being declared to be null and void, as contrary to the constitution of the United States, therefore, left him defenseless, subject to answer to the consequences of his personal act in the seizure and detention of the plaintiff's property, and responsible for the damages occasioned thereby.

This principle is illustrated and enforced by the case of U. S. v. Lee, 106 U. S. 196, 1 Sup. Ct. Rep. 240. In that case the plaintiffs had been wrongfully dispossessed of their real estate by defendants claiming to act under the authority of the United States. That authority could exist only as it was conferred by law, and as they were unable to show any lawful authority under the United States it was held that there was nothing to prevent the judgment of the court against them as individuals, for their individual wrong and trespass. This feature will be found, on an examination, to characterize every case where persons have been made defendants for acts done or threatened by them as officers of the government, either of a state or of the United States, where the objection has been interposed that the state was the real defendant, and has been overruled. The action has been sustained only in those instances where the act complained of, considered apart from the official authority alleged as its justification, and as the personal act of the individual defendant, constituted a violation of right for which the plaintiff was entitled to a remedy at law or in equity against the wrong-doer in his individual character.

The present case stands upon a footing altogether different. Admitting all that is claimed on the part of the complainants as to the breach of its contract on the part of the state of Virginia by the acts of its general assembly referred to in the bill of complaint, there is nevertheless no foundation in law for the relief asked. For a breach of its contract by the state, it is conceded there is no remedy by suit against the state itself. This results from the eleventh amendment to the constitution, which secures to the state immunity from suit by individual citizens of other states or aliens. This immunity includes not only direct actions for damages for the breach of the contract brought against the state by name, but all other actions and suits against it, whether at law or in equity. A bill in equity for the specific performance of the contract against the state by name, it is admitted could not be brought. In Hagood v. Southern, 117 U. S. 52, 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 608, it was decided that in such a bill, where the state was not nominally a party to the record, brought against its officers and agents, having no personal interest in the subject-matter of the suit, and defending only as representing the state, where "the things required by the decree to be done and performed by them are the very things which, when done and performed, constitute a performance of the alleged contract by the state," the court was without jurisdiction, because it was a suit against a state.

The converse of that proposition must be equally true, because it is contained in it; that is, a bill, the object of which is by injunction, indirectly, to compel the specific performance of the contract, by forbidding all those acts and doings which constitute breaches of the contract, must also, necessarily, be a suit against the state. In such a case, though the state be not nominally a party on the record, if the defendants are its officers and agents, through whom alone it can act in doing and refusing to do the things which constitute a breach of its contract, the suit is still, in substance, though not in form, a suit against the state. Such is the precise character of the suit in the circuit court against the petitioners, in which the order was made the violation of which constitutes the contempt for which they have been committed to the imprisonment from which they seek delivery by these writs.

It may be asked what is the true ground of distinction, so far as the protection of the constitution of the United States is invoked, between the contract

rights of the complainant in such a suit, and other rights of person and of property. In these latter cases it is said that jurisdiction may be exercised against individual defendants, notwithstanding the official character of their acts, while in cases of the former description the jurisdiction is denied.

The distinction, however, is obvious. The acts alleged in the bill as threatened by the defendants, the present petitioners, are violations of the assumed contract between the state of Virginia and the complainants, only as they are considered to be the acts of the state of Virginia. The defendants, as individuals, not being parties to that contract, are not capable in law of committing a breach of it. There is no remedy for a breach of a contract, actual or apprehended, except upon the contract itself, and between those who are by law parties to it. In a certain sense and in certain ways the constitution of the United States protects contracts against laws of a state subsequently passed, impairing their obligation, and this provision is recognized as extending to contracts between an individual and a state; but this, as is apparent, is subject to the other constitutional principle, of equal authority, contained in the eleventh amendment, which secures to the state an immunity from suit. Wherever the question arises in a litigation between individuals, which does not involve a suit against a state, the contract will be judicially recognized as of binding force, notwithstanding any subsequent law of the state impairing its obligation. But this right is incidental to the judicial proceeding in the course of which the question concerning it arises. It is not a positive and substantive right of an absolute character, secured by the constitution of the United States against every possible infraction, or for which redress is given as against strangers to the contract itself, for the injurious consequences of acts done or omitted by them. Accordingly, it was held in Carter v. Greenhow, 114 U. S. 317, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 928, that no direct action for the denial of the right secured by a contract, other than upon the contract itself, would lie under any provisions of the statutes of the United States authorizing actions to redress the deprivation, under color of state law, of any right, privilege, or immunity secured by the constitution of the United States. In that case it was said, (page 322:) "How, and in what sense, are these rights secured to him by the constitution of the United States? The answer is, by the provision of article 1, § 10, which forbids any state to pass laws impairing the obligation of contracts. That constitutional provision, so far as it can be said to confer upon or secure to any person any individual rights, does so only indirectly and incidentally. It forbids the passage by the states of laws such as are described. If any such are, nevertheless, passed by the legislature of a state, they are unconstitutional and void. In any judicial proceeding necessary to vindicate his rights under a contract affected by such legislation, the individual has a right to have a judicial determination declaring the nullity of the attempt to impair its obligation. This is the only right secured to him by that clause of the constitution." But where the contract is between the individual and the state, no action will lie against the state, and any action founded upon it against defendants who are officers of the state, the object of which is to enforce its specific performance by compelling those things to be done by the defendants which, when done, would constitute a performance by the state, or to forbid the doing of those things which, if done, would be merely breaches of the contract by the state, is in substance a suit against the state itself, and equally within the prohibition of the constitution.

It cannot be doubted that the eleventh amendment to the constitution operates to create an important distinction between contracts of a state with individuals and contracts between individual parties. In the case of contracts between individuals, the remedies for their enforcement or breach, in existence at the time they were entered into, are a part of the agreement itself, and constitute a substantial part of its obligation. Louisiana v. New Orleans, 102 C. S. 203. That obligation, by virtue of the provision of article 1, § 10,

of the constitution of the United States, cannot be impaired by any subsequent state legislation. Thus, not only the covenants and conditions of the contract are preserved, but also the substance of the original remedies for its enforcement. It is different with contracts between individuals and a state. In respect to these, by virtue of the eleventh amendment to the constitution, there being no remedy by a suit against the state, the contract is substantially without sanction, except that which arises out of the honor and good faith of the state itself, and these are not subject to coercion. Although the state may, at the inception of the contract, have consented as one of its conditions to subject itself to suit, it may subsequently withdraw that consent, and resume its original immunity, without any violation of the obligation of its contract in the constitutional sense. Beers y. Arkansas, 20 How. 527; Railroad Co. v. Tennessee, 101 U.S. 337. The very object and purpose of the eleventh amendment were to prevent the indignity of subjecting a state to the coercive process of judicial tribunals at the instance of private parties. It was thought to be neither becoming nor convenient that the several states of the Union, invested with that large residuum of sovereignty which had not been delegated to the United States, should be summoned as defendants to answer the complaints of private persons, whether citizens of other states or aliens, or that the course of their public policy and the administration of their public affairs should be subject to and controlled by the mandates of judicial tribunals, without their consent, and in favor of individual interests. To secure the manifest purposes of the constitutional exemption guarantied by the eleventh amendment, requires that it should be interpreted, not literally and too narrowly, but fairly, and with such breadth and largeness as effectually to accomplish the substance of its purpose. In this spirit it must be held to cover, not only suits brought against a state by name, but those also against its officers, agents, and representatives, where the state, though not named as such, is, nevertheless, the only real party against which alone in fact the relief is asked, and against which the judgment or decree effectively operates.

But this is not intended in any way to impinge upon the principle which justifies suits against individual defendants, who, under color of the authority of unconstitutional legislation by the state, are guilty of personal trespasses and wrongs, nor to forbid suits against officers in their official capacity either to arrest or direct their official action by injunction or mandamus, where such suits are authorized by law, and the act to be done or omitted is purely ministerial, in the performance or omission of which the plaintiff has a legal interest. In respect to the latter class of cases, we repeat what was said by this court in Board of Liquidation v. McComb, 92 U. S. 531, 541: "A state, without its consent, cannot be sued by an individual; and a court cannot substitute its own discretion for that of executive officers in matters belonging to the proper jurisdiction of the latter. But it has been well settled that, when a plain official duty, requiring no exercise of discretion, is to be performed, and performance is refused, any person who will sustain personal injury by such refusal may have a mandamus to compel its performance; and, when such duty is threatened to be violated by some positive official act, any person who will sustain personal injury thereby, for which adequate compensation cannot be had at law, may have an injunction to prevent it. In such cases the writs of mandamus and injunction are somewhat correlative to each other. In either case, if the officer plead the authority of an unconstitutional law for the non-performance or violation of his duty, it will not prevent the issuing of the writ. An unconstitutional law will be treated by the courts as null and void." An example and illustration of this class will be found in Seibert v. Lewis, 122 U. S. 284, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1190.

Nor need it be apprehended that the construction of the eleventh amendment, applied in this case, will in any wise embarrass or obstruct the execution of the laws of the United States, in cases where officers of a state are

guilty of acting in violation of them under color of its authority. The government of the United States, in the enforcement of its laws, deals with all persons within its territorial jurisdiction as individuals owing obedience to its authority. The penalties of disobedience may be visited upon them without regard to the character in which they assume to act, or the nature of the exemption they may plead in justification. Nothing can be interposed between the individual and the obligation he owes to the constitution and laws of the United States, which can shield or defend him from their just authority, and the extent and limits of that authority the government of the United States, by means of its judicial power, interprets and applies for itself. If, therefore, an individual, acting under the assumed authority of a state, as one of its officers, and under color of its laws, comes into conflict with the superior authority of a valid law of the United States, he is stripped of his representative character, and subjected in his person to the consequences of his individual conduct. The state has no power to impart to him any immunity from responsibility to the supreme authority of the United States.

In contradistinction to these classes of cases, for the reasons given, we adjudge the suit of Cooper and others v. Marye and others, in which the injunctions were granted against the present petitioners, to be in substance and in law a suit against the state of Virginia. It is therefore within the prohibition of the eleventh amendment to the constitution. By the terms of that provision, it is a case to which the judicial power of the United States does not extend. The circuit court was without jurisdiction to entertain it. All the proceedings in the exercise of the jurisdiction which it assumed are null and void. The orders forbidding the petitioners to bring the suits, for bringing which they were adjudged in contempt of its authority, it had no power to make. The orders adjudging them in contempt were equally void, and their imprisonment is without authority of law. It is ordered, therefore, that the petitioners be discharged.

FIELD, J., (concurring.) I concur in the judgment discharging from arrest and imprisonment the attorney general of Virginia, and other officers of the state, who were adjudged by the circuit court to be guilty of contempt in refusing to obey the order of that court in the case of Cooper v. Marye, and were fined, and committed until the fine should be paid, and they should purge themselves of their contempt by doing the acts commanded. I also concur in the main position stated in the opinion of the court, upon which the discharge of the petitioners is ordered, namely, that the case of Cooper v. Marye was in law and fact a suit by subjects of a foreign state against the state of Virginia. To a suit of that character the judicial power of the United States cannot, by the eleventh amendment of the constitution, be extended. The object of that suit was to enjoin the attorney general and the commonwealth's attorneys of the several counties, cities, and towns of Virginia from bringing any suits in the name of the commonwealth to enforce the collection of taxes, for the payment of which coupons originally attached to her bonds had been tendered. To enjoin the officers of the common wealth, charged with the supervision and management of legal proceedings in her behalf, from bringing suits in her name, is nothing less than to enjoin the commonwealth, for only by her officers can such suits be instituted and prosecuted. This seems to me an obvious conclusion.

The reason given in the bill in Cooper v. Marye for seeking the injunction is that the state has passed various acts creating impediments in the way of holders of coupons establishing their genuineness, by which their value will be practically destroyed, and the performance of these obligations be evaded, unless the officers of the state are restrained from prosecuting such suits. The numerous devices to which the state has resorted in order to escape from her obligations under the forms of law may, it is true, seriously embarrass