Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/512

 500 FEDERAL REPORTER. �This question has been treated by the supreme court as one full of dilficulty and delicacy. In one of the earliest cases in which the right of a corporation to sue in the circuit court was entertained, the language of the opinion was nervously vigorous in rejecting the prop- osition that such a purely legal entity and artilicial intangible crea- ture of the law of a state could be deemed a citizen of a state within the meaning of the constitution ; but feeling under equal obligation to entertain jurisdiction in a proper case, and to decline to usurp jurisdiction in any case, it was held in that case, not without much misgiving, as we now know, that although such a creature of the law could not be a citizen, it might be (and in that case was) composed of real persons who were citizens, and that such citizens, their citi- zenship being such that suing in their own names the suit coulu be entertained, might sue in the corporate name which represented them. 5 Cranch, 87. �In a later case it was considered that while the corporation was an intangible creature of the law, real persons having dealings with it encountered very real natural persons representing it in the state creating it, and that these real natural persons constituting its man- agement were the parties in fact to its transactions and to its litiga- tion, and that so contemplated, and for the purpose of determining the question of jurisdiction in suits, a corporation created by and doing business in a particular state ia to be deemed, to all intents and purposes, as a person, although an artificial person, an inhabitant of the same state, for the purposes of its incorporation, capable of being treated as a citizen of that state as much as a natural person. And it has grown to be the settled doctrine that the real persons composing a corporation are conclusively presumed to be citizens of the state incorporating it, and no inquiry in relation thereto is per- mitted. 2 How. 558; 16 How. 325; 20 How. 232. In a later case a new phase of the question was met, and it was held that where two states (Ohio and Indiana) bad eaeh chartered a corporation by the same name, and with the same capacities and powers, and in- tended to accomplish the same objects, and which was spoken of in the laws of said states respectively as one corporate body, exercis- ing the same powers and fulfilling the same duties in both states, said corporate body cannot maintain a suit against a citizen of Ohio or Indiana in the circuit court. 1 Black, 297, 298. Again, where a citizen of Illinois brought suit in Wisconsin against the Chicago & Northwestern Eailway Company, a corporation created by and exist- ing uudei the laws of the states of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan, ��� �