Opinion of the Court.

tions, the courts of the United States have frequently interposed by writs of habeas corpus and discharged prisoners who were held in custody under state authority. So, also, when they are in the custody of a state officer, it may be necessary, by use of the writ, to bring them into a court of the United States to testify as witnesses." Ex parte Royall, 117 U. S. 241, 251; Ex parte Fonda, 117 U. S. 516, 518; In re Duncan, 139 U. S. 449, 454; In re Wood, 140 U. S. 278, 289; McElvaine v. Brush, 142 U. S. 155, 160; Cook v. Hart, 146 U. S. 183, 194; In re Frederich, 149 U. S. 70, 75; New York v. Eno, 155 U. S. 89, 96; Pepke v. Cronan, 155 U. S. 100; In re Chapman, 156 U. S. 211, 216; Whitten v. Tomlinson, 160 U. S. 231, 242; Iasigi v. Van De Carr, 166 U. S. 391, 395; Baker v. Grice, 169 U. S. 284, 290; Tinsley v. Anderson, 171 U. S. 101, 105; Fitts v. McGhee, 172 U. S. 516, 533; Markuson v. Boucher, 175 U. S. 184.

There are cases that come within the exceptions to the general rule. In Loney's case, 134 U. S. 372, 375, it appeared that Loney was held in custody by the state authorities under a charge of perjury committed in giving his deposition as a witness before a notary public in Richmond, Virginia, in the case of a contested election of a member of the House of Representatives of the United States. He was discharged upon a writ of habeas corpus sued out from the Circuit Court of the United States, this court saying: "The power of punishing a witness for testifying falsely in a judicial proceeding belongs peculiarly to the government in whose tribunals that proceeding is had. It is essential to the impartial and efficient administration of justice in the tribunals of the nation, that witnesses should be able to testify freely before them, unrestrained by legislation of the State, or by fear of punishment in the state courts. The administration of justice in the national tribunals would be greatly embarrassed and impeded if a witness testifying before a court of the United States, or upon a contested election of a member of Congress, were liable to prosecution and punishment in the courts of the State upon a charge of perjury, preferred by a disappointed suitor or contestant, or instigated by local passion or prejudice." So, in Ohio v. Thomas, 173 U. S. 276, 284-5, which was the case of the arrest of the acting governor

Opinion of the Court.

of the Central Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, at Dayton, Ohio, upon a charge of violating a law of that State, the action of the Circuit Court of the United States discharging him upon habeas corpus, while in custody of the state authorities, was upheld upon the ground that the state court had no jurisdiction in the premises, and because the accused, being a Federal officer, "may, upon conviction be imprisoned as a means of enforcing the sentence of a fine, and thus the operations of the Federal Government might in the meantime be obstructed." The exception to the general rule was further illustrated in Boske v. Comingore, 177 U. S. 459, 466–7, in which the applicant for the writ of habeas corpus was discharged by the Circuit Court of the United States, while held by state officers, this court saying: "The present case was one of urgency, in that the appellee was an officer in the revenue service of the United States whose presence at his post of duty was important to the public interests, and whose detention in prison by the state authorities might have interfered with the regular and orderly course of the business of the department to which he belonged."

The present case does not come within any of the exceptions to the general rule announced in the cases above cited. It is not, in any legal view, one of urgency. The accused does not, in his application, state any reason why he should not be required to bring the question involved in the prosecution against him before a higher court of the State and invoke its power to discharge him if in its judgment he is restrained of his liberty in violation of the Constitution of the United States. It cannot be assumed that the state court will hesitate to enforce any rights secured to him by that instrument; for upon them equally with the courts of the Union rests the duty to maintain the supreme law of the land. Robb v. Connolly, 111 U.S. 624, 637. If the state court declined to recognize the Federal right specially claimed by the accused, the case could be brought here for review.

After observing that the questions of constitutional law arising in this case had been determined in Schollenberger v. Pennsylvania, 171 U. S. 1, and Collins v. New Hampshire, 171 U....-S.

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30, adversely to the present contention of the State, and that there was jurisdiction to discharge the petitioner on habeas corpus, the Circuit Court said: "Even then, for reasons of comity, such power will seldom be exercised by the Circuit Court to discharge a petitioner held under process from a state court, even after conviction by the trial court, unless large interests affecting the business of many or the rights of the public are so involved that serious consequences will follow from the delay which will be caused by the prosecution of a writ of error to a final decision, or unless the question has already been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States, whose decision the state court has disregarded in the proceeding. State statutes prohibiting the importation from other States and sale of articles of commerce, especially articles of food, or adapted for general use, are regarded as affecting general interests and the rights of the public; and habeas corpus has frequently been resorted to in cases of imprisonment for violation of such statutes." In re Brundage, 96 Fed. Rep. 963, 959.

Among the cases cited in support of the action of the Circuit Court are Minnesota v. Barber, 136 U. S. 313, and Plumley v. Massachusetts, 155 U. S. 461. It must be admitted that in the first named case the general rule announced in prior and subsequent cases was not applied. The reasons for not then applying it do not appear from the opinion of the court. It may be that the precise point now under examination was not called to its attention. Plumley v. Massachusetts is not in point, for it came to this court upon writ of error to the highest court of Massachusetts.

It is undoubtedly true that the state enactment in question may in its operation affect the business of many, and in some degree, but indirectly, the rights of the public; but that consideration is not sufficient to justify such interference by the Federal court as will interrupt the orderly course of proceed ings in the state court. We do not think that the exercise by a Federal court of its power upon habeas corpus to discharge one held in custody by the state authorities and charged with a violation of a state enactment should be materially controlled by any consideration of the extent of particular business

Opinion of the Court.

interests that may be affected by a prosecution instituted in a state tribunal against him, or of the indirect effect of his detention in custody upon the rights of the general public. Nor do we think that the Circuit Court should have interfered with the custody of the appellee because in its opinion the action of the Municipal Court of Minneapolis was inconsistent with the judgments of this court in the Schollenberger and Collins cases. Upon that question the state court was entitled to form its own opinion, and give judgment accordingly. Whether, in view of the judgments in the Schollenberger and Collins cases, the state court should have held the Minnesota statute to be repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, it is not necessary now to say. Besides the record does not show that the attention of the Municipal Court of Minneapolis was called to those cases; much less is there any reason to suppose that it deliberately refused to accept the decisions of this court as controlling upon questions arising under the Constitution of the United States. As disclosed by the record, the case, we repeat, is not one of urgency within the meaning of our decisions, and does not suggest any adequate reason why the appellee should not be required, before applying to the Circuit Court of the United States to be discharged upon habeas corpus, to seek at the hands of the higher courts of the State a reversal of the judgment rendered against him in the Municipal Court of Minneapolis.

Without expressing any opinion as to the validity of the Minnesota statute, the judgment of the Circuit Court must be reversed, with directions to dismiss the application for a writ of habeas corpus, without prejudice to a renewal of it when the appellee shall have exhausted the remedies provided by the State for a review of the judgment of the Municipal Court of Minneapolis.

Reversed.

Statement of the Case.

WILKES COUNTY v. COLER.

CERTIFICATE FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH

CIRCUIT.

No. 167. Argued October 19, 22, 1900.-Decided March 18, 1901.

The decisions of the highest court of a State upon the question whether a particular act was passed in such manner as to become, under the state constitution, a law, should be accepted and followed by the Federal courts.

The principle reaffirmed that the recital in municipal bonds of a wrong act as authority for their being issued does not preclude a holder of such bond from showing that independently of such act there was power to issue the bonds.

The rule reaffirmed that the question arising in a suit in a Federal court of the power of a municipal corporation under existing laws to make negotiable securities is to be determined by the law as judicially declared by the highest court of the State at the time the securities were issued, and that the rights and obligations of parties accruing under such a state of the law would not be affected by a different course of judicial decisions subsequently rendered any more than by subsequent legislation.

THE ultimate question in this case is whether the county of Wilkes, North Carolina, is liable upon certain bonds issued in 1889 in payment of a subscription in its name to the capital stock of the North Western North Carolina Railroad Company.

Each bond was in the usual form of such instruments, was made payable October 1, 1913, and recited that it was "one of a series of one hundred bonds of the denomination of one thousand dollars each, issued by authority of an act of the General Assembly of North Carolina, ratified the 20th day of February, A. D. 1879, entitled 'An act to amend the charter of the North Western North Carolina Railroad for the construction of a second division from the towns of Winston and Salem, in Forsyth County, up the Yadkin Valley, by Wilkesboro, to Patterson's Factory, Caldwell County,' and authorized by a vote of a majority of the qualified voters of Wilkes County, by an election regularly held for that purpose on the 6th day of