448
Cases ruled and adjudged in the
1793.
term, used the term “subordinate corporations,” meaning to refer to such only (as alone capable of the slightest application, for the purpose of the objection) whose creation and whose powers are limited by law.
The differences between such corporations, and the several States in the Union, as relative to the general Government, are very obvious in the following particulars. 1st. A corporation is a mere creature of the King, or of Parliament; very rarely of the latter; most usually of the former only. It owes its existence, its name, and its laws, (except such laws as are necessarily incident to all corporations merely as such) to the authority which create it. A State does not owe its origin to the Government of the United States, in the highest or in any of its branches. It was in existence before it. It derives its authority from the same pure and sacred source as itself: The voluntary and deliberate choice of the people. 2d. A corporation can do no act but what is subject to the revision either of a Court of Justice, or of some other authority within the Government. A State is altogether exempt from the jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States, or from any other exterior authority, unless in the special instances where the general Government has power derived from the Constitution itself. 3d. A corporation is altogether dependant on that Government to which it owes its existence. Its charter may be forfeited by abuse. Its authority may be annihilated, without abuse, by an act of the Legislative body. A State, though subject in certain specified particulars to the authority of the Government of the United States, is in every other respect totally independent upon it. The people of the State created, the people of the State can only change, its Constitution. Upon this power there is no other limitation but that imposed by the Constitution of the United States; that it must be of the Republican form. I omit minuter distinctions. These are so palpable, that I never can admit that a system of law calculated for one of these cases is to be applied, as a matter of course, to the other, without admitting (as I conceive) that the distinct boundaries of law and Legislation maybe confounded, in a manner that would make Courts arbitrary, and in effect makers of a new law, instead of being (as certainly they alone ought to be) expositors of an existing one. If still it should be insisted, at though a State cannot be considered upon the fame footing as the municipal corporations I have been considering, yet, as relative to the powers of the General Government it must be deemed in some measure dependent; admitting that to be the case (which to be sure is, so far as the necessary execution of the powers of the General Government extends) yet in whatever character this may place a State, this can only afford a reason for a new law,
calculated
