Very soon after this, against strong dis sent, the doctrine of the conclusive presump tion from the habitat of a corporation as to the residence or citizenship of those who used its name and exercised its faculties. was pronounced; Marshall v. R. Co., 16 How. 314, 14 L. Ed. 953. This presumption was reaffirmed and both parties held estopped with respect to . it; Covington Drawbridge Co. v. Shepherd, 20 How. 227, 15 L. Ed. 896 ; and the presumption was held to be a "legal" one, which no averment or evidence might rebut ; Ohio & M. R. Co. v. Wheeler, 1 Black 286, 17 L. Ed. 130 ; and in Muller v. Dows, 94 U. S. 444, 24 L. Ed. 207, the court, by Strong, J., said, "A corporation itself can be a citizen of no state in the sense in which the word 'citizen' is used in the constitution of the United States," and then reiterates the doctrine of , conclusive presumption as settled law. Thus the theory on which cor porations were finally recognized as citizens was based upon what Baldwin, C. J., proper ly characterized as a legal fiction ; 41 Am. L. Rev. 38. This fiction, as he says, was given definite, and as it was supposed final, shape by Taney, C. J., in Ohio & M. R. Co. v. Wheeler, 1 Black, 286, 17 L. Ed. 130, where not only was the doctrine of conclusive pre sumption sustained, but it was also said that "in such a suit it can make no differ ence whether plaintiffs sue in their own proper names or by the corporate name and style by which they are described." The difficulties arising from the extension of corporate operations to different states necessarily caused some modification of the doctrine, and when the courts were asked to extend it so that a corporation of one state (conclusively presumed to be composed of citizens of that state) was authorized by the law of another state to do business therein, that it should be deemed to be composed of citizens of the second state with the same jurisdictional results, they said, "We are unwilling to sanction such an extension. of the doctrine, which, as heretofore estab lished, went to the very verge of judicial power," and having stated the doctrine as beginning with an assumption of fact that state corporations were composed of citi zens of the state creating them and then the change of the presumption to one of law, said, "There we are content to leave it;" St.
Louis & S. F. Ry. Co. v. James, 161 U. S. 545, 16 Sup. Ct. 621, 40 L. Ed. 802. Finally when a case arose in which the suit was brought against a corporation by a stockholder as serting the control of the corporation by antagonistic interests, it was held that there might be proof that the stockholder was not a citizen of the state which created the corporation, and that he had a constitution al right to bring his suit in the federal court. The court said : "It is one thing to give to a corporation a status, and another thing to take from a citizen the right given him by the constitution." Accordingly, it was considered that the presumption of citi zenship of stockholders must give way to the actual fact proved that the complainant was a citizen of a different state, and that thereupon the jurisdiction attached. After quoting the phrase above cited from 161 13. S. 545, that the doctrine as then settled "went to the very verge of judicial power," it Was added : "Against the further step urged by appellees we encounter the Con stitution of the United States." Doctor v. Harrington, 196 U. S. 579, 25 Sup. Ct. 355, 49 L. Ed. 606. Thus in this case the court, as is said by Baldwin, C. J., in the article above cited, "marked the lififits of the verge, but in such a way as practically to overrule many of their earlier decisions." The precite question decided in the last case had undoubtedly been determined dif ferently long before, where citizens of Loui siana sued a Mississippi Bank and a plea to the jurisdiction, that two other citizens of LOuisiana were among the shareholders, was sustained ; Commercial & R. Bank v. Slocomb, .14 Pet. (U. S.) 60, 10 L. Ed. 354; the changed result is attributed, by Bald win, J., to the fact, not that the written law had changed, but that "a new genera tion of judges gave it a new interpretation and twisted a new theory into an old shape," and the ease with which this was done he considers at striking evidence both of the strength of a written constitution and the futility of a written fiction.