Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/398

 890 FEDERAL EBPOBTBH. �judges of England have declared that an act of parliament against common right and natural equity is void. Angel on Corporations, § 767. �In our own country we regard such acts as so subversive of natural rights as not to be within the authority dolegated to the legislative departaient of the government. �It is sometimes supposed that because the constitution of the United States prohibits the state from passing such laws, and is silent as to the United States, the authority to pass them resides in congress by implication. This is an erroneous assumption. As said by Wilson, J., (13 Wend. 328,) "It is now considered an universal and f undamental proposition in every well regulated and properly administered government, whether embodied in a eonstitutional form or not, that private prop- erty caimot be taken for private purposes, nor for public, without just compensation, and that the obligation of con- tracts cannot be abrogated or essentiaUy impaired. These and other vested rights of the citizen are held sacred and inviolable, even against the plentitude of power of the legis- lative department." �The same views are expressed by the learned author of Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, (176,) as follows : "How- ever proper ana prudent it may be expressly to prohibit those things which are not understood to be -within the proper attributes of legislative power, such prohibition can never be essential when the extent of the power apportioned to the legislative department is found, upon examination, not to be Iroad enough to cover the obnoxious authority. The absence of such prohibition cannot, by implication, confer power." �A contract is property ; to destroy it partially is to take it, and to do this by arbitrary legislative action is to do it with- out due process of law. Sinking Fund Cases, 99 U. S. 746-7. �If any of our own states had passed such an act as the one under consideration it would have been the duty of the courts of that state to treat it as an unlawf ul exercise of power ; and certainly it cannot be expected that this court will tolerate legislation by a foreign state which it would not sanction if ��� �