declared not to be bills of credit, within the meaning of the constitution. (a)

(2.) No state can pass any ex post facto law.

Ex post

facto laws.

In Calder v. Bull, (b) the question on the meaning of an ex post facto law, within the prohibition of the constitution, was extensively discussed.

The legislature of Connecticut had, by a resolution or law, set aside a decree of the court of probates, rejecting a will, and directed a new hearing before the court of probates, and the point was, whether that resolution was an ex post facto law prohibited by the constitution of the United States.

409

It was held, that the words ex post facto laws were technical expressions, and meant every law that made an act done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; or which aggravated a crime, and made it greater than it was when committed; or which changed the punishment, and inflicted a greater punishment than the law annexed to the crime when committed; or

(a) Craig v. The State of Missouri, ub. sup. Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution, vol. iii. p. 19, seems to be of opinion, that, independent of long-continued practice from the time of the adoption of the constitution, the states would not, upon a sound construction of the constitution, if the question was res integra, be authorized to incorporate banks, with a power to circulate bank paper as currency, inasmuch as they are expressly prohibited from coining money. He cites the opinions of Mr. Webster, of the senate of the United States, and of Mr. Dexter, formerly secretary at war, on the same side. But the equal, if not the greater authority of Mr. Hamilton, the earliest secretary of the treasury, may be cited in support of a different opinion, and the contemporary sense and uniform practice of the nation. are decisive on the question. Bank paper, like checks and negotiable notes, circulates entirely upon private credit, and is not a coercive circulation. It is at every person's option to receive or reject it. The constitution evidently had in view bills of credit issued by law, in the name and on the credit of the state, and intended for circulation from hand to hand as money, and of which our history furnished so many pernicious examples. The words of the constitution are, that no state shall emit bills of credit. The prohibition does not extend to bills emitted by individuals, singly or collectively, whether associated under a private agreement for banking purposes, as was the case with the Bank of New York prior to its earliest charter, in the winter of 1791, or acting under a charter of incorporation, so long as the state lends not its credit, or obligation, or coercion, to sustain the circulation. In the case of Briscoe v. The Bank of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, this question was put at rest, by the opinion of the court, that there was no limitation in the constitution on the power of the states to incorporate banks, and their notes were not intended to be inhibited, nor were considered as bills of credit. 11 Peters, 257, 345-349.

(b) 3 Dallas, 386.

which altered the legal rules of evidence, and received less or different testimony than the law required at the time of the commission of the offence, in order to convict the offender. The Supreme Court concluded, that the law or resolution of Connecticut was not within the letter or intention of the prohibition, and was, therefore, lawful. (a) Afterwards, in Fletcher v. Peck, (b) it was observed, that an ex post facto law was one which rendered an act punishable in a manner in which it was not punishable when it was committed. This definition is distinguished for its comprehensive brevity and precision, and it extends to laws passed after the act, and affecting a person by way of punishment of that act, either in his person or estate. Ex post facto laws relate to penal and criminal proceedings, which impose punishments or forfeitures, and not to civil proceedings, which affect private rights retrospectively. Retrospective laws and state laws, divesting vested rights, unless ex post facto, or impairing the obligation of contracts, do not fall within the prohibition contained in the constitution of the United States, however repugnant they may be to the principles of sound legislation. (c)

State courts

(3.) No state can control the exercise of any authorno control ity under the federal government.

eral courts.

The state legislatures cannot annul the judgments, nor determine the extent of the jurisdiction, of the courts of the Union. This was attempted by the legislature of Pennsylvania, and declared to be inoperative and void by the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of the United States v.

Peters. (d) Such a power as we have heretofore seen, *410 necessarily resides in the supreme judicial tribunal * of

the nation. It has also been adjudged, that no state court has authority or jurisdiction to enjoin a judgment of the Circuit Court of the United States, or to stay proceedings under it. This was attempted by a state court in Kentucky,

(a) Strong v. The State, 1 Blackford's Ind. Rep. 193, S. P.

(b) 6 Cranch, 138.

(c) Calder v. Bull, 3 Dallas, 386. Satterlee v. Matthewson, 2 Peters's U. S. Rep. 413. Watson v. Mercer, 8 Ibid. 88.

(d) 5 Cranch, 115.

and declared to be of no validity by the Supreme Court of the United States, in M'Kim v. Voorhies. (a) No state tribunal can interfere with seizures of property made by revenue officers, under the laws of the United States; nor interrupt, by process of replevin, injunction or otherwise, the exercise of the authority of the federal officers; and any intervention of state authority for that purpose is unlawful. This was so declared by the Supreme Court in Slocum v. Mayberry. (b) Nor can a state court issue a mandamus to an officer of the United States. This decision was made in the case of M' Cluny v. Silliman, (c) and it arose in consequence of the Supreme Court in Ohio sustaining a jurisdiction over the register of the land office of the United States, in respect to his ministerial acts as register, and claiming a right to award a mandamus to that officer to compel him to issue a final certificate of purchase. The principle declared by the Supreme Court was, that the official conduct of an officer of the government of the United States can only be controlled by the power that created him.

If the officer of the United States who seizes, or the court which awards the process to seize, has jurisdiction of the subject matter, then the inquiry into the validity of the seizure belongs exclusively to the federal courts. But if there be no jurisdiction in the instance in which it is asserted, as if a marshal of the United States, under an execution in favor of the United States against A., should seize the person or property of B., (d) then the state courts have jurisdiction to protect the person and the property so illegally invaded; and it is to be observed that the jurisdiction of the state courts in Rhode Island was admitted by *the Supreme Court of *411 the United States, in Slocum v. Mayberry, upon that very ground.

(a) 7 Cranch, 279.

(b) 2 Wheaton, 1. Any restraint by state authority on state officers in the execution of the process of their courts, is altogether inoperative upon the officers of the United States in the execution of the mandates which issue to them. Baldwin, J., in McNutt v. Bland, 2 How. U. S. 17.

(c) 6 Wheaton, 598.

(d) Bruen v. Ogden, 6 Halsted, 370. Dunn v. Vail, 7 Martin's Louisiana Rep.

In the case of the United States v. Barney, (a) the district judge of Maryland carried to a great extent the exemption from state control of officers or persons in the service of the United States, and employed in the transportation of the mail. · He held, that an innkeeper had no lien on the horses which he had fed, and which were employed in the transportation of the mail. The act of congress of March, 1790, prohibited all wilful obstruction of the passage of the mail; and a claim for debt would not justify the stopping of the mail, or the means necessary to transport it, either upon principles of common law, or upon the statute. The judge stated, in this case, that even a stolen horse found in the mail stage could not be seized; nor could the driver, being in debt, or having committed an offence, be arrested, in such a way as to obstruct the passage of the mail. But in a subsequent case in the Circuit Court of Pennsylvania, (b) it was held, that the act of congress was not to be so construed as to endanger the public peace and safety. The carrier of the mail, driving through a populous city with dangerous rapidity, and contrary to a municipal ordinance, may be stopped, and the mail temporarily detained by an officer of the city. So, if the officer had a warrant against a felon in the stage, or if the driver should commit murder in the street, and then place himself on the mail stage box, he would not be protected from arrest, though a temporary stoppage of the mail might be the consequence. The public safety in one case is of more moment than the public inconvenience which it might produce in the other. (c)

But while all interference on the part of the state authorities with the exercise of the lawful powers of the national government has been, in most cases denied, there is one case in which any control by the federal over the state *courts, other than by means of the established appellate jurisdiction, has equally been prevented. In Diggs and Keith v. Wol

* 412

(a) 3 Hall's Law Journal, 128.

(b) United States v. Hart, 1 Peters's Cir. Rep. 390.

(c) A toll-gate keeper, on a national road passing through a state, cannot stop the coach carrying the United States mail, for a refusal to pay toll. The remedy, if any, is by action against the contractor. Hopkins v. Stockton, 2 Watts & Serg. 163.

cott, (a) it was decided generally, that a court of the United States could not enjoin proceedings in a state court; and a decree of the Circuit Court of the United States for the district of Connecticut was reversed, because it had enjoined the parties from proceeding at law in a state court. So in Ex parte Cabrera, (b) it was declared, that the circuit courts of the United States could not interfere with the jurisdiction of the courts of a state. These decisions are not to be contested; and yet the district judge of the northern district of New York, in the spring of 1823, in the case of Lansing and Thayer v. The North River Steamboat Company, enjoined the defendants from seeking in the state courts, under the acts of the state legislature, the remedies which those acts gave them. This would appear to have been an assumption of the power of control over the jurisdiction of the state courts, in hostility to the doctrine of the Supreme Court of the United States. (c) In the case of Kennedy v. Earl of Casillis, (d) an injunction had been unwarily granted in the English court of chancery, to restrain a party from proceeding in a suit in the court of sessions in Scotland, where the parties were domiciled. It was admitted that the court of sessions was a court of competent jurisdiction, and an independent foreign tribunal, though subject to an appeal like the court of chancery, to the house of lords. If the court of chancery could

(a) 4 Cranch, 179, S. P. In Kittredge v. Emerson, in Sup. Court of New Hampshire, July term, 1844, 15 New Hampshire R. 227, and in Dudley's case, C. C. U. S. for Pennsylvania, 1 Pennsylvania Law Journal, 302. Carrell v. F. & M. Bank, Harrison Mich. Ch. R. 197. Neither the United States nor the state courts can interfere or control the operations of each other. The courts of the United States can only interfere by their appellate jurisdiction, and the state courts have no power to interfere by injunction. 3 Story's Com. on the Constitution, 621-626.

(b) 1 Wash. Cir. Rep. 232. United States v. French, 1 Gallison, 1, S. P.

(c) The assumed jurisdiction was not afterwards sustained; and a bill in equity in a state court for an injunction, though against an alien or citizen of another state, was held not to be such a suit as was removable to a Circuit Court of the United States. 1 Paige's Ch. R. 183.

(d) 2 Swanst. Rep. 313. But in the subsequent case of Bushby v. Munday, 5 Madd. Ch. Rep. 297, the Vice-Chancellor granted an injunction, under special circumstances, to restrain proceedings in the Court of Sessions in Scotland. The New York Court of Chancery has disclaimed any such jurisdiction, in respect to a foreign suit previously commenced, though it were in possession of jurisdiction over the person of the party. Mead v. Merritt, 1 Paige, 402.