Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/564

552 FEDERAL REPORTER. �the present banking act, for it does not oontain the words "as fully as natural persons," and yet it was construed by the supreme court as not broad enough to authorize suit by a bank in a circuit court of the United States. U. S. Bank v. Devenue, 5 Cranch, 85. In that case the court held that the general words employed in the act gave only a general capacity to sue, and not a partioular privilege to sue in the courts of the United States. �It was probably in view of this decision that congress, in the second bank charter, enacted in 1816, (3 St. 101,) pro- vided expressly that the bank should have power to sue and be sued "in ail courts having competent jurisdistion, and in any circuit court of the United States." �Upon the first question, therefore, our conclusion is that, as the right of a national bank to sue in this court is assimi- lated to the right of a natural person under the statutes to do so, it is a right which can be maintained only upon the ground of citizenship, since that is the test which must be applied to natural persons. �2. Can the plaintiff, a national bank, sue as a citizen of Missouri? By a long course of adjudication by the supreme court of the United States it has been settled that a state corporation is, for jurisdictional purposes, to be regarded as a citizen of the state by whose laws it is created. �These adjudications are, however, for the most part not placed upon the ground that a corporation can in any proper sense be a citizen within the meaning of that term as em- ployed in the constitution. On the contrary, it is repeatedly declared that a corporation cannot possess the attributes of citizenship, and the rule is upheld upon the ground that a suit brought by or against a corporation is regarded as a suit brought by or against the stockholders of the corporation, and for the purposes of jurisdiction it is conclusively presumed that ail the stockholders are citizens of the state which, by its laws, created the corporation. Insurance Co. v. French, 18 How. 404; MuUerv. Dows, 94 U. S. 444; Covington Draiv- bridge Co. v. Shepherd, 20 How. 233. �The question for our consideration in this case is, does this ����