After the board had designated three hundred as the number to be let by contract, under the statute authorizing them to make the contract, the legal effect was precisely the same as if the Legislature itself had designated that as the number that the board should furnish. And the simple act of furnishing the number of convicts called for by the contract was a ministerial duty imposed by law. So the litigation in the McConnell case was "with the officers, not the State." Rolston v. Missouri Fund Com'rs, 129 U. S. 390, 411.
Chief Justice Chase in Mississippi v. Johnson, 4 Wall. (U. S.) 475, has given a definition of a ministerial duty that has never since been improved. He says: "A ministerial duty, the performance of which may, in proper cases, be required by judicial process, is one in regard to which nothing is left to discretion. It is a simple definite duty, arising under conditions admitted or proved to exist and imposed by law." Our own court, through Mr. Justice Smith, defines a ministerial act as follows: "One which an officer or tribunal performs in a given state of facts, in a prescribed manner, in obedience to the mandate of legal authority, without regard to or the exercise of his own judgment upon the propriety of the act done." Ex parte Batesville & Brinkley R. Co., 39 Ark. 82; Grider v. Tally, 77 Ala. 422; See Throop, Pub. Officers, § 535, and cases cited in note.
Since the contract fixed the precise terms as to the number of convicts to be furnished, and this duty under the statute was purely ministerial, it follows that from any and every viewpoint the doctrine of the McConnell case is right, and should not have been overruled.
The doctrine conforms to that class of cases which hold that "where a suit is brought against defendants, who, claiming to act as officers of the State, and under the color of an unconstitutional statute, commit acts of wrong and injury to the rights and property of the plaintiff acquired under a contract with the State, such suit, whether brought to recover money or property in the hands of such defendants unlawfully taken by them in behalf of the State, or for compensation in damages, or in a proper case where the remedy at law is adequate, for an injunction to prevent such wrong and the injury, or for a mandamus in a like case to enforce upon the defendant the performance of a plain legal
