such property prior to that of the existing mortgage. Nor can the legislature lawfully give to a court or other public corporation or subdivision of the state any such priority in such a case unless the claim be for a tax, as a tax is known to the law. Neither can the state itself secure any such priority under such circumstances. When entering into contract relations with individuals, the state, or a municipal corporation thereof, is to be treated the same as an individual. It cannot call or charge up the amount of a loan as a tax, and by that device confer upon the loan all the qualities of a tax. If it could, and in this manner insert a lien for this pseudo tax ahead of existing liens, the holder of security upon real estate would be at the mercy of the state, despite the supreme law of the land preventing the impairing the obligations of a contract by any state. If the state can make this claim a tax, then there is no limit to its power by definition to confiscate the securities of others. The amount advanced to the individual by the state would not affect the right of the state to call ita tax. Neither would the purpose for which the advance was made, nor the exigency to meet which the sum was loaned, limit in any manner the power of the legislature to invest such loan with all the attributes of a tax. The loan by the public supplanting the first lien upon real property might be so great as to work a destruction of the lien supplanted. But it is sufficient to condemn a law that it works any impairment, however slight, of the obligations of a contract. To affect a dollar of a prior lien by subsequent legislation is as vicious before the law as to destroy the lien altogether. Walker v. Whitehead, 16 Wall. 314.
The mortgagee had, when the law of 1889 was enacted, secured a first lien upon the real estate covered by the mortgage. It was for this he had contracted with the mortgagor. Any law affecting the priority of this lien, or giving the mortgagor authority to do so, clearly impairs the obligation of this contract. Said the court in Railroad Co. v. Hamilton, 134 U. S. 296, at page 301, 10 Sup. Ct. Rep. 546: “There was no statute in force at the time the mortgage was executed giving any priority to subsequent mechanic’s lien; and by the mortgage the mortgagee took its vested priority beyond the power of the mort-
