Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/225

 209 U.S. HmLta% J., diszenting. party sued. To enjoin him from representing the State in such suit is therefore, for every practical or legal purpose, to enjoin the State itself. This court, in the Debs Cae, 158 U.S. 564, 584, said: "Every government, entrusted, by the very terms of its being, with powers and duties to be exercised and discharged for the general welfare, has a right to apply to its own courts for any proper assistance in the exercise of the one and the discharge of the other, and it' is no sufficient answer to its appeal to one of those courts that it has no pecuniary interest in the matter. The obligation which it is under to promote the interest of all, and to prevent the wrongdoing of one resulting in injury to the general welfare, is often of itself sufficient to give it a standing in court. This proposi- tion in some of its relations has heretofore received the sanction of this court." If there be one power that a State possesses, which ought to be deemed beyond the control, in any mode, of the National Government or of any of its courts, it is the power by judicial proceedings to appear in its own courts, by its law-officer or by attorneys, and seek the guidance of those courts in respect of matters of a justiciable nature. If the state court, by its judgment, in such a suit, should disregard the injunctions of the Federal Constitution, that judgment would be subject to review by this court upon Tit of crror or appeal. It will be well now to look at the course of decisions in other Federal courts. Fed. Rep. 616, 622, which was a suit in equity, one of the principal objects of which was to restrain. the enforcement of an act .of the Ohio legislature relating to food produ6ts, particularly of a named coffee in which the plaintiffs were interested. The Circuit Court of Appeals held that the bill was properly dismissed, saying, among other things: "What, then, is the object of the injunction sought in this ease? It is no more or less than t restrain the officer of the State from bringing preeutions for violations of an act which said offi-

�