Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/499

 IN'EB TIBUECIO PAEROTT. 491 �But when a contract has been made, or property acquired ; by a lawful exercise of the granted powers, the contract is as inviolable, and the right of property, with everything inci- dental to that right, as sacred, as in the case of natural per- sons. �It is not merely the title to the property that is protected from legislative confiscation, but that which gives value to ail property, the right to its lawful use and enjoyment. �It would be a "mockery, a delusion, and a snare" to say to a corporation : "The title to the property you bave law- fully acquired we may not disturb, but we may prescribe such conditions as to its use as will utterly destroy its bene- ficiai value." �It need hardly be said that no reference is here intended to the power of the state to enact police laws — that is, laws to promote the health, safety, or morals of the public. To such laws corporations are amenable to the same estent as natural persons and no f urther. �The law in question does not affect to be a police law. Its validity, if applied to natural persons, was not contended for at the bar. The authority to pass it was sought to be derived exclusively from the reserved power over corporations. �It forbids the employment of Chinese. If the power to pass it exists, it might equally well have forbidden the em- ployment of Irish, or Germans, or Americans, or persons of color, or it might have required the employment of any of these classes of persons to the exclusion of the rest. �It might, as avowed at the bar, bave presoribed a rate of wages, hours of work, or other conditions destructive of the profitable use of the corporate property. Such an exercise of legislative power can only be maintained on the ground that stockholders of corporations have no rights which the legislature is bound to respect. Behind the artificial or ideal being created bythe statute and called a corporation, are the corporators — natural persons who have conveyed their prop^ erty to the corporation, or contributed to it their money, and received, as evidence of their interest, shares in its capital stock. The corporation, thongb it holds the title, is the ��� �