tended, is not opposed to Folsom v. Ninety Six. There, it is said, the validity of the bonds was established, but it was not decided that the "corporate authorities" of the township might be vested with power to assess and collect a tax to pay them. Here the question is, can the auditor and treasurer, who are state officers, be made to assess and collect a tax which, under the constitution and laws of the State, can only be done by the "corporate authorities" of the township?

Plaintiffs' construction of the case of Folsom v. Ninety Six is too limited. It takes from the case about all of its value. The case decided that the bonds were issued for corporate purposes and established them as a valid indebtedness of the township. It proclaimed the validity of the laws under which the bonds were issued and made those laws and every part of them the contract with the bondholders. It did not occur to any one to urge that, because the legislature might vest the township authorities with the power to assess and collect taxes, such power could not be vested in county officers. By clear implication the contrary is decided in State v. Whitesides, 30 S. Car. 579; State v. Harper, 30 S.. Car. 586; State v. Neely, 30 S. Car. 587. The offices of auditor and treasurer still exist, and through them taxes are assessed and collected in the State of South Carolina. The case at bar is not, therefore, like Heine v. Levee Commission, 19 Wall. 655, or Meriweather v. Garrett, 102 U. S. 472, 498. It is like Von Hoffman v. Quincy, 4 Wall. 535; City of Galena v. Amy, 5 Wall. 705; Seibert v. Lewis, 122 U. S. 284; Mobile v. Watson, 116 U. S. 289, and many others.

But plaintiffs in error urge other defenses: (a) By an amendment of the constitution in 1903 the corporate existence of Township Ninety-six was destroyed, its offices abolished and all its corporate agents were removed. (b) By an act of the legislature Township Ninety-six was included in Greenwood County. At the time the bonds were issued it was situated in Abbeville County. (c) Plaintiffs in error are forbidden by the laws of the State from assessing and collecting taxes for Ninety

six Township, and have no power to perform the acts enjoined upon them by the judgment of the Circuit Court.

These defenses differ only in form from those which this court held insufficient in the cases to which we have referred, and they acquire no sanctifying power because one of them, or all of them, may be said to rest upon the constitution of the State. This indeed is not denied. It is asserted that the obligation of the contract is unimpaired; that the State has done nothing but exercise an unquestionable right—the right to alter or destroy its corporations.

The power of the State to alter or destroy its corporations is not greater than the power of the State to repeal its legislation. Exercise of the latter power has been repeatedly held to be ineffectual to impair the obligation of a contract. The repeal of a law may be more readily undertaken than the abolition of townships or the change of their boundaries or the boundaries of counties. The latter may put on the form of a different purpose than the violation of a contract. But courts cannot permit themselves to be deceived. They will not inquire too closely into the motives of the State, but they will not ignore the effect of its action. The cases illustrate this. There may indeed be a limitation upon the power of the court. This was seen and expressed in Heine v. Levee Commission, and Meriweather v. Garrett, supra. There is no limitation in the case at bar. A tax has been provided for and there are officers whose duty it is to assess and collect it. A court is within the line of its duty and powers when it directs those officers to the performance of their duty; and their objects upon which the tax can be laid. It is the property within the boundaries of the territory that constituted Township Ninety-six.

Mount Pleasant v. Beckwith, 100 U. S. 514, and Mobile v. Watson, 116 U. S. 289, are cases in which municipal corporations had incurred indebtedness, and afterward their municipal organization was destroyed and their territory added to other municipalities. It was argued in those cases, as it is argued in this, that such alteration or destruction of the subordinate gov

ernmental divisions was a proper exercise of legislative power, to which creditors had to submit. The argument did not prevail. It was answered, as we now answer it, that such power, extensive though it is, is met and overcome by the provision of the Constitution of the United States which forbids a State from passing any law impairing the obligation of contracts. See also Shapleigh v. San Angelo, 167 U. S. 646. And this is not a limitation, as plaintiffs in error seem to think it is, of the legislative power over subordinate municipalities-either over their change or destruction. It only prevents the exercise of that power being used to defeat contracts previously entered into.

It is further contended by plaintiffs in error that this is in effect a suit against the State. The argument to support this contention is that if the auditor and treasurer are not corporate authorities, as it is insisted the Circuit Court decided, they are necessarily "state officers, and, being state officers, this proceeding is an attempt to require of the State the performance of her contract." The reasoning by which this is attempted to be sustained is rather roundabout. It is based in part on distinctions which, it is contended, were made by the Circuit Court, and on the assumption that the Circuit Court decided that the levy of taxes prescribed by section nine of the statute - under which the bonds were issued, was a levy by the legislature and the taxing officers state officers. This proceeding hence, it is argued, becomes a proceeding against the State, and "the relief sought is to require of the State the performance of her contract" (italics ours) by the coercion of her officers to the preformance of duties which she has by a statute forbidden. And, it is said, it may be admitted that such statute "is unconstitutional and therefore void," nevertheless the relief asked against the officers is "affirmative official action," which the political body of which they are the mere servants has forbidden them to exercise, and it is not competent for a court to compel them to exercise, because of the immunity of the State from suit under the Constitution of the United States.

To sustain these contentions an elaborate argument is presented and a number of cases are cited. The most direct of the cases are Louisiana v. Jumel, 107 U. S. 711; Hagood v. Southern, 117 U. S. 52; Rolston v. Missouri Fund Commrs., 120 U. S. 390, 411; In re Ayers, 123 U. S. 443; Pennoyer v. McConnaughy, 140 U. S. 1. It would make this opinion too long to review these cases. Nor is it necessary. It is enough to say that they do not sustain the contentions of plaintiffs in

error.

CARTER v. HAWAII.

Judgment affirmed.

ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE TERRITORY OF HAWAII.

No. 144. Argued December 13, 1905.-Decided January 8, 1906.

Damon v. Hawaii, 194 U. S. 154, followed to effect that under the Hawaiian Act of 1846, "of Public and Private Right of Piscary," the owner of an ahapuaa is entitled to the adjacent fishing ground within the reef, and that the statute created vested rights therein within the saving clause of the organic act of the Territory repealing all laws of the Republic of Hawaii conferring exclusive fishing rights.

The Land Commission of Hawaii was established to determine title to lands against the Hawaiian Government, and, as that Commission rightly treated fisheries as not within its jurisdiction, the omission to establish the right to a fishery before that Commission does not prejudice the right of the owner thereto.

THE facts are stated in the opinion.

Mr. Sidney M. Ballou, with whom Mr. Benjamin L. Marx and Mr. J. J. Darlington were on the brief, for plaintiffs in error.

Mr. Emil C. Peters, Attorney General of the Territory of

Hawaii, and Mr. Fred W. Milverton for defendant in error, submitted.

MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a proceeding to establish the plaintiffs' rights to a several fishery of the kind described in Damon v. Hawaii, 194 U. S. 154, and comes here under the same circumstances as that case did. The fishery in question is a sea fishery within the reef in Waialae Iki, island of Oahu, and is claimed by metes and bounds in the complaint. The plaintiffs are owners of the adjacent land under a royal patent following upon an award of the Land Commission, and the only difference between this case and the former one is that in this the fishery is not described in the royal patent, and that, apart from the question of prescription, upon which we shall say nothing, the plaintiffs have to rely upon the statutes alone. They offered evidence at the trial that, before the action of the king in 1839, those under whom the plaintiffs claim title had enjoyed from time immemorial rights similar to those set out in the statutes, and also that they had been in continuous, exclusive and notorious possession of the konohiki right for sixty years. They offered in short to prove that their predecessor in title was within the statutes and therefore owned the fishery, it not being disputed that if he did, the plaintiffs own it now. The judge rejected the evidence and entered judgment for the defendant, and on exceptions this judgment and that in Damon v. Hawaii were sustained at the same time in one opinion by the Supreme Court. 14 Hawaiian, 465.

We deem it unnecessary to repeat the ground of our intimation in the former case, that the statutes there referred to created vested rights. We simply repeat that in our opinion such was their effect. The fact that they neither identified the specific grantees nor established the boundaries, is immaterial when their purport as a grant or confirmation is decided. It is enough that they afforded the means of identification, and that presumably the boundaries can be fixed by reference to existing