delivered the opinion of the court.
Before analyzing the facts particularly bearing upon the legal questions for. decision, in order- to a comprehension of those questions we summarize in their chronological order matters which are undisputed concerning the origin and development of this controversy.
The legislature of South Carolina in 1855 exempted the capital stock and property, of the Northeastern Railroad Company from all taxation during its charter existence. .In 1849- the Cheraw and Darlington Railroad Company was chartered, by legislative act, and by an amendment to the charter, adopted in 1863, the last-named company was endowed with all' the. powers, rights and privileges granted by the charter of the Northeastern Railroad Company; it being besides provided-that' the charter should not be subject to the provisions of a general law, reserving the right to repeal, alter and amend, except where otherwise specially provided.
Under the assumed authority of a law of South Carolina, providing for the assessment and taxation of property, passed in 1868 (14 S. Car. Stat. 27-67), the Cheraw and Darlington Railroad was assessed in the counties of Darlington and Chesterfield, through which the road ran. It became the duty of
For at least twenty-five years following the decision in the Legues case no attempt was made to tax the property of the Cheraw anti Darlington Railroad Company. In the year 1897 an act was passed, directing the Attorney General ter proceed to- test the right of any railroad company to exemption, and under this act that official sued the Cheraw and Darlington Railroad Company to recover one hundred and thirty-four thousand dollars, the sum of taxes,.penalties and interest for a period of twenty years, on the alleged ground that the company ■had'been mistakenly treated as having a contract of exemption. The Supreme Court of the State, however, without passing upon the question of exemption, decided that the right to recover did not obtain, because in any event an assessment against the railroad as provided by law was- a prerequisite to the levy and collection of taxes.
From a statement made in the argument of counsel it is to be deduced that during the year. 1898 the capital stock and property of the Cheraw and Darlington Railroad Company was acquired by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company- of South Carolina, and as the result- of a charter granted to that company by the State of South Carolina, in 1898, it is conceded that the property formerly belonging to the Chéraw and Dar-lington Railroad Company became taxable, and that the.State has since? that time levied and collected the taxes due' on the* property. It is, moreover, conceded that the appellee on this record, the Atlantic Coast Line Railrpad Company, a Virginia corporation, acquired, in 1900, the property of the Cheraw and Darlington Railroad Company, as the successor of the South Carolina corporation which bore the same name.
In the year 1900 an act was passed in South Carolina, providing Nor the assessment for taxation of railroad property "which has been off the tax books for the years in which they have been off the books, and to fix the time when such taxes shall become due, and for -the collection thereof.” The act
A meeting of the board appointed by this act was called in May, 1900, by'the Secretary of State, for the purpose of assessing the property formerly belonging to the Cheraw and Darlington Railroad Company, and in the control and possession of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad for a period of ten years back _ from 1898, on the ground that during such period the property in question had not been taxed for state or county purposes. The Atlantic’ Coast Line Railroad Company appeared and protested against the proposed assessment. In the •protest it directed the attention of the board to the exemption act, to the injunction granted and the decree rendered and affirmed by this court in the Pegues case. n The .board overruled the protest and valued the property of the Cheraw and Dar-lington Railroad Company for a period of ten years back from
A preliminary, injunction was granted, restraining; the Attorney Generaliaud.lusuassoeiate counsel from further prosecuting the actions brought; ih¡ the stato-oMurtt, and also,-restraining the county treasuit’rsd'jtonii further proceeding to co-lect the taxes. In resjmnse to-, a. rulé- to show cause why the- preliminary injunction shnuld.not’ be made perpetual the defendants answered^, denying Hie-right to the relief:' prayed upon grounds which, as, far as now material, we shall hereafter state and consider. After hearing; on. petition and! answers, accompanied by affidavits or admissions, establishing the fads lo I to as we have previously stated them, a final! decree, was eni-tored, perpetuating the preliminary injunction.. Subsequently the court, reciting that itss attention had been: diroded to the fact that its decree was interpreted as restraining the prosecution of suits for any tax which might have accrued from the eighteenth day of July, 1898,. when the exemption had been surrendered, modified its decree so as t-o exclude from the operation of the injunction any act of the defendants looking to the collection, ‘‘by suit or otherwise, of any sum ov sums of money which may be due oir charged for taxes on said properly of the Cheraw and Dar-lington Railroad Company after said eighteenth <lay of July, 1898, at which date it was admitted in argument the exemption-established in Pegues v. Humphreys was surrendered. ” This appeal was then taken.
Although the errors assigned on the record are seventeen in number, in-the argument at bar but six contentions were relied upon, and we shall therefore confine ourselves to their consideration.
All the propositions involved in the assignments will be dis
First. We at once treat as undoubted the right of the Atlantic Coast Line Ptailroacl Company to the benefits of the decree in the Pegues case, since it is conceded in the argument at bar that that company, as the successor to the rights of Pegues, is entitled to the protection of the original decree rendered in his favor.
On the face of the r,ecord in the Pegues case, the nominal defendants were the treasurers of the counties, of Chesterfield and Darlington, in which counties the property, of the railroad was situated. Those now holding the office of treasurer in each of the named counties are among the parties 5"n this record, with the addition of the treasurer of'Florence County, which .county, as we have stated, consists of territory embraced in Chesterfield or Darlington County at tiré time of the entry of the Pegues decree., That under these circumstances the defendant treasurers, as the successors in office of the officials who were parties to the Pegues case, are privies to that decree, is established.
Prout
v.
Starr,
In déciding whether the State and its Attorney General were privies to the Pegues decree, some elementary propositions must be borne in mind:
a. In view of the prohibitions of the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, a State, without its consent, may not be sued by an individual in a Circuit Court of the United States.
b. A suit against state officers to enjoin them from enforcing a tax alleged to be in violation of the Constitution of the United States is not a suit against a State within the prohibition of the Eleventh Amendment. The doctrine announced inmany previous cases on the subject was stated by Mr. Justice Harlan, delivering the opinion of the court in Smyth v. Ames, 169 U. S. 466 , wherein, after holding that a suit against officers, to prevent the doing of acts authorized by a state statute was, not necessarily a suit against the State, or within the prohibitions of the Eleventh Amendment, it was said (pp. 518, 519):
“It is the settled doctrine of this court that a suit against individuals for the purpose of preventing, them as officers of a State from enforcing an uncónstiluíional enactment to the ins jury of the rights of the plaintiff, is not a suit against the State within the meaning of that Amendment”
And the subject: was reviewed and restated in
Front
v.
Starr,
c. Although a State may not, be sued without its consent, such immunity is a privilege which may be waived, and hence where a State voluntarily becomes a party to a cause and submits. its rights for judicial determination, it will be bound thereby and cannot escape the result of its own voluntary act by invoking the prohibitions of the Eleventh Amendment.
Clark
v.
Barnard,
As, then, the State was not a party
eo nomine-
in the Pegues case and as, although the suit was against officers it was not for that reason alone a suit against the State, it must follow that the ascertainment of whether the State was a party to that cause depends upon determining whether the taxing officers who were the nominal defendants were endowed by the State with the. power, in.a suit brought against them assailing the validity of taxes levied, to represent the State in the controversy so as to conclusively establish the. rights of the State ■ against the plaintiff if decree passed against him, and on the other hand to establish as against the State the rights of the plaintiff in that cause if decree passed in his favor. Thus the inquiry reduces itself to this: Did the State of South Carolina become, in substance and effect, a party- to the Pegues case? In other words, did the State, through the authority which it had conferred upon the defendant officers, voluntarily submit
As a prelude to the consideration of the question just stated, it is well to determine at once the interest which the State had in the controversy which was represented by the county treasurers who were the nominal defendants in the Pegues case. Coming to do so, it is plain that the controversy which that suit involved-was one in which the State was directly interested, since the officers who were the nominal defendants were charged by the state law, not only with the duty of collecting the county but also the state taxes, the validity of which 'was assailed on grounds which challenged • the power of the State to impose any tax upon the property of the corporation during the existence of its charter. The officers were, therefore, in a sense, state officers, charged with .the performance of a duty imposed for the benefit of the State. And that those officers were considered as being
pro hac vice
state officers, for .the purposes of the controversy which the Pegues case involved, is shown by the statement of' the case made by this-'court in delivering its opinion affirming the .decree. Thus it was said (
“These different enactments above mentioned being in force, the state officers of counties in South Carolina, where, the Che-raw and Darlington Railroad was situate, acting under the authority of the legislature of the. State,-imposed certain taxes on the stock and property of that company, and were, proceeding to enforce, payment of them, when one Pegues, .a stockholder in Mississippi, filed a bill in the court below, praying an injunction to restrain the colléction.”
The question, then, is narrowed to this: Were the officers endowed with authority to stand in judgment for the State in suits brought against such officers wherein the validity of the taxes was assailed?
The law of South Carolina under which the taxes were levied
We see no escape from the conclusion that the provision last quoted,- where suit was brought concerning state taxes, made a county treasurer, who \yas the state tax collector, an agent for the State and empowered him, “for and on behalf of the State,” to defend the suit, and required him, in order fully to protect the interests of the State, to be represented by the highest larv officer of the State, the Attorney General. And the power, which we think the section referred to conferred upon the county officers to represent the State in suits or actions, is moreover persuasively indicated by a consideration of the act of 1870, amending in certain particulars the act of 1868. 14 S.. Car. Stat. 366. Substantially, that amendment, whilst forbidding the taxpayer from enjoining the collection of taxes, created a remedial system, by which questions of asserted illegality - were to be examined by the state auditor, and, where that of-
If there were doubt — which we think there is not — as to the 'construction which we give to the act 'of 1868, that doubt is entirely dispelled by a consideration of the contemporaneous interpretation given to the act by the officials charged with its execution, by the view which this court took as to the real party in interest on the record in the Pegues case, and by the action as well as non-action which followed the decision of that case by the state government in all its department.? through a long period of years.
The answer in the Pegues case, which denied the existence of the alleged contract of exemption and asserted the existing- and continuing power of the State to tax, was signed, for the defendants, by the Attorney General of South Carolina, who also, in his official capacity, verified such pleading. The word “defendants’.’ cannot be construed as implying any other tham the county officers empowered to represent the State, without imputing to the Attorney General a failure to discharge the
“The State contends that the privileges thus granted were limited to those conferred upon the Northeastern by its original charter or act of incorporation, passed in 1851.”
When to all these conclusive considerations there is added the fact that we have not been referred to any legislative action
Concluding, as we do from the terms of the act of 1868, that 'the officers who were named as’ defendants- in the Pegues case were, for the purpose of that litigation, the agents voluntarily appointed by the State to defend its rights and submit them to judicial determination, wc content ourselves with saying that it is unnecessary to review the case of State v. Corbin, 16 S. Car. 533, and other decisions of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, pressed upon'our attention, since those cases did not involve the statute of 1868 or statutes of like" import, And' moreover, we must not be understood as holding that other. provisions of the law of South Carolina, relied upon in argument, would be inadequate to bind the State by the action of its Attorney General, if the provisions of the act of 1868 did ■ not ‘exist. . Into that consideration we have not entered.
. Second. The State of South Carolina and its Attorney Gen-, eral, and.his associate counsel, as the agents of the State, being, therefore, privies to and bound by the decree in the Pegues casé, we must determine what was concluded by that decree.
a.
The complaint in the Pegues case, it is said, -mistakenly averred that the Cheraw and Darlington Railroad had not been built at the time the amendment of the charter was made which gave the exemption relied upon, and as this, it is asserted, was not traversed by the answer filed in the casé by the Attorney General it was consequently erroneously assumed to be true in fact, and the decree, it is argued, was based upon such assumption. From this the contention is that if the truth had been established a different decree would have been rendered, because no consideration for the'grant of exemption would then have appeared. 'But, even granting the premise, the deduction is unsound. To admit it would destroy 'the effect of
the
thing adjudged, resulting from the decree in the Pégues case, since all defenses then existing to the asserted right of exemption, whether brought to the attention- of the court or waived, were foreclosed ,by the decree.
United States
v.
California & Oregon Land Co.,
.
b.
At is urged that as the taxes, the collection of which the court enjoined, were not for the same years as were the taxes with which the Pegues case was concerned, the Pegues decree was, therefore, not
res ..udicata,
because it related to a different-cause of action. This rests upon the assumption that a decree ' enjoining the collection of a tax for one year can never be the thing adjudged as to the right to collect taxes of a subsequent year. But the proposition entirely disregards the fact that the decree in the Pegues .case, enjoining the collection of the taxes in controversy in that case, was rested upon the ground that there was a contract protected from impairment by the Constitution of the United States which was as controlling on future faxes as it was upon the particular - taxes to which the Pegues suit related. The contention, therefore, simply asserts that a contract right of exemption was' beyond, the pale of judicial protection, because rights under such contract could never be sanctioned bv final judicial action. Besides, the proposition is not open to controversy.
New Orleans
v.
Citizens’ Bank,
Third. It is insisted that the court below had no power to restrain the Attorney General of South Carolina and the counsel associated with him from prosecuting in the state courts actions authorized by the laws of the State, and hence that - the court erred in awarding an injunction against said officers. Support for the proposition is rested upon the terms of the, Eleventh Amendment and the provisions of section 720 of the Revised Statutes,'forbidding the-granting of a writ by any-¿. court of the United States to stay proceedings in any. court of a State, except in cases where such injunction may be authorized by any law relating to proceedings in bankruptcy. The-soundness of the doctrine relied upon is undoubted.
In re Ayers,
And this reasoning -disposes of the contention that the court
Affirmed.