Pennsylvania, 141 U. S. 101; Maine v. Grand Trunk Railway Company, 142 ib. 217), and maintained to the end his strong convictions with respect to the necessity of national con trol over commerce. In his opinion on cir cuit in the Arthur Kill Bridge Case, only three years before his death, he carried his doctrine to what seems to many an unwar ranted extreme. Yet Justice Bradley rendered some con spicuous services in defence of the rights of the States. Throughout, the controversy arising out of the repudiation of State bonds he adhered to the letter of the Eleventh Amendment. In the Virginia Coupon Cases, 114 U. S. 270, where the majority of the court held that immunity from suit did not exempt a State from the operation of the constitutional provision with respect to the impairment of the obligation of contracts, Justice Bradley dissented on the ground that the proceedings there in issue were virtually suits against the State of Virginia to compel specific performance of her agreement to re ceive coupons in payment of taxes. How ever just such proceedings might seem in the abstract, they were repugnant to the Eleventh Amendment, which was "not in tended as a mere formula of words, to be slurred over by subtle methods of interpreta tion, so as to give it a literal compliance, without regarding its substantial meaning and purpose." With respect to the asser tion of the majority opinion that it was not the State but the government which declined to .receive the coupons, and that if recourse were denied, the citizen would be without redress against unconstitutional acts of the btate, he said: "Whenever his life, liberty or property is threatened, assailed or invaded by unconsti tutional acts, or by an attempt to exercise unconstitutional laws, he may defend himself in every proper way, by habeas corpus, by de fence to prosecutions, by actions brought on his own behalf, by injunction, by mandamus.
Any one of these modes of redress, suitable to his case, is open to him. A citizen cannot, in any way, be harassed, injured or destroyed by unconstitutional laws without having some legal means of resistance or redress. But this is where the State or its officers move against him. The right to all these means of protection and redress against un constitutional oppression and exaction is a very different thing from the right to coerce the State into a fulfilment of its contracts. The one is an indefeasible right, a right which cannot be taken away; the other is never a right, but may or may not be con ceded by the State; and, if conceded, may be conceded on such terms as the State chooses to impose." And in Hans T>. Virginia, 143 U. S. I, where he delivered the opinion of the court dismissing a direct suit against the State, he said: "The legislative department of a State represents its polity and its will; and is called upon by the highest demands of natural and political law to preserve justice and judg ment, and to hold inviolate the public obliga tions. Any departure from this rule, except for reasons most cogent (of which the Legis lature, and not the courts, is the judge) never fails in the end to incur the odium of the world, and to bring lasting injury upon the State itself. But to deprive the Legislature of the power of judging what the honor and safety of the State may require, even at the expense of a temporary failure to discharge the public debts, would be attended with greater evils than such failure can cause." In Chicago, etc., Railroad Company v. Minnesota, 134 U. S. 418, the majority of the court held that while a grant to the direc tors of a railroad company of the right to regulate rates of fare does not prevent the State from declaring subsequently through general law that all rates of fare should be reasonable, yet a State cannot prescribe un reasonable rates, and the judiciary are the final judges of what are reasonable rates; and
