impairing the obligation of contracts. It is and has been the law from time immemorial that a public agent acting without the scope of his authority without authority of law can not shield himself behind the sovereign, the State, but where injury is thereby done to private citizens, the officer or agent is a trespasser and personally liable in damages."
We further said, quoting from the Supreme Court of the United States: "Such a defendant, sued as a wrongdoer, who seeks to substitute the State in his place, or to justify by authority of the State, or to defend on the ground that the State has adopted his act and exonerated him, can not rest on the bare assertion of his defense, but is bound to establish it; and, as the State is a political corporate body, which can act only through agents and command only by laws, in order to complete his defense, he must produce a valid law of the State which constitutes his commission as its agent and warrant for his act." Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U. S. 270.
The judges who rendered the decision in the McConnell case were of the opinion that the Board of Penitentiary Commissioners exceeded their powers in attempting to set aside the contract, and that their acts in so doing were wrongful, and such as to render them liable as individuals for any damages directly resulting to others from such acts. Nicks v. Rector, 4 Ark. 284; Rice v. Harrell, 24 Ark. 402; O'Conner v. Auditor, 27 Ark. 242; Simpson v. Robinson, 37 Ark. 142; Parham v. McMurray, 32 Ark. 269; State v. Newton, 33 Ark. 276; DeYampert v. Johnson, 54 Ark. 165; Railway Co. v. Hackett, 58 Ark. 381. See also Hawkins v. United States, 96 U. S. 692; Whiteside v. United States, 93 U. S. 257.
The Legislature itself could not rescind or set aside the contract and deprive the Brick Company of the benefit thereof unless that power was expressly reserved in the act conferring upon the board the authority to make the contract. Woodruff v. Berry, 40 Ark. 256; Berry v. Mitchell, 42 Ark. 244.
The board certainly had no authority except what the Legislature had given them. The Legislature had not even attempted to vest them with power to destroy or to impair the obligations of the contract which they were authorized to make. The Supreme Court of the United States has quite recently decided that: "The
