Opinion of the Court. August 16, 1876, a general law was enacted entitled "An act to encourage the construction of railroads in Texas by donations of lands," whereby it was provided that any railroad company theretofore chartered or which might be thereafter organized under the general laws of the State should, upon the completion of a section of ten miles or more of its road, be entitled to receive, and there was thereby granted to every such railroad from the State, sixteen sections of land for every mile of its road so completed and put in good running order. The act prescribed the usual formalities for ascertaining compliance on the part of railroad companies with the provisions of the act, the issue of certificates, etc. Laws, 1876, 153. April 22, 1882, the legislature passed an act repealing all laws in force granting lands for the construction of railroads. Laws, 1882, 3. Mr. Joseph Paxton Blair for plaintiffs in error. Mr. James A. Baker and Mr. R. S. Lovett were with him on his brief. Mr. M. M. Crane, attorney general of the State of Texas, for defendant in error. MR. CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court. 1. The State of Texas, as owner of the lands in question, sought by its petition the removal of the cloud cast upon its title by reason of certain certificates and patents. The petition averred that those certificates were issued to the railway company for the construction of its road from the town of Columbus to the Guadalupe bridge during a period of time when there was no law in existence authorizing the issue of land certificates and patents, and charged that the action of the Commissioner of the General Land Office of the State in issuing and delivering the certificates, and permitting them to be located and surveyed upon the lands and returned to and filed in the General Land Office, and in the issue of the patents, was had and done wholly without authority of law and in Opinion of the Court. violation of the constitution and laws of the State. It did not appear from the State's statement of its case that the suit was one arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States, and the Court of Civil Appeals properly held that the petition to remove the cause into the Circuit Court of the United States came within the rule laid down in Tennessee v. Union and Planters' Bank, 152 U. S. 454, and subsequent cases, and that there was no error in overruling the application. 2. The railroad, franchises, rights and property of the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railroad Company had been sold on execution and under foreclosure, and the purchasers at the sales and their associates had formed a new company under the old name. By the act of July 27, 1870, this new company was given the name of "The Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway Company," to distinguish it from the "sold-out' company;" was endowed with various franchises; and, among other things, was authorized to extend the existing line of railroad owned and operated by the company from Columbus, in Colorado County, to San Antonio, in the county of Bexar, and thence to a terminus on the Rio Grande. At this time the constitution of Texas provided: “The legislature shall not hereafter grant lands to any person or persons, nor shall any certificates for land be sold at the land office, except to actual settlers upon the same, and in lots not exceeding one hundred and sixty acres." The certificates and patents in question in this suit were issued to the company for a portion of its railroad constructed between the Colorado and the Guadalupe Rivers, under the act of July 27, 1870, and before the act of August 16, 1876, took effect. Plaintiff in error contends that by virtue of the charter of the old company and the amendments thereto, and the general laws, prior to 1869, it had a vested and contract right to receive and hold these lands, which was impaired or of which it was deprived, in violation of section ten of Article I of the Constitution of the United States, and section one of the Four Opinion of the Court. teenth Amendment thereof, by section six of Article X of the state constitution of 1869, as given effect by the state courts. The Supreme Court of Texas considered the legislation at length in replying to the questions propounded by the Court of Civil Appeals. Conceding, for the purposes of argument, that the original company acquired a right to sixteen sections of land per mile of constructed railroad under the general law of January 30, 1854, and the special acts amendatory of its charter; that this right was preserved by the general law of November 13, 1866; and that section six of Article X of the constitution of 1869 did not operate to repeal either of those acts in respect of the right of existing companies to lands in aid of the construction of the lines of road specifically defined in their charters, the court was nevertheless unable to conclude that after the constitutional provision took effect an act of the legislature which authorized the company to change its former route and to construct a different line of road would carry with it the right to acquire land by the construction of the new line. In its view the law of January 30, 1854, applied only to companies then chartered, and was intended to grant lands for the construction of those roads only which the companies were authorized by their charters to build. And while in the absence of any constitutional inhibition on granting lands in aid of railroads, it might be that legislative authority to a company to change its line could properly be treated as carrying with it the privilege of earning lands for the construction of the new line, this did not follow as to new routes authorized after such land grants had been forbidden by the fundamental law. And here the act of February 4, 1854, supplementary to the act of the same date which extended the privileges of the law of January 30, 1854, to the company, restricted those privileges to the line to Austin and to the extension of that line. If then the new company had succeeded to the right to acquire lands by the construction of the line fixed by the supplementary act, the construction of a different road in the exercise of the power given by the act of 1870 could not involve an obligation to furnish lands in aid of such construction. ever. Opinion of the Court. And the court said: "The company, before the passage of the act of 1870, had no right to acquire lands by the building of a railroad to San Antonio; to complete that right, a new grant was requisite; but at that time the legislature was prohibited in the broadest terms from making any grant whatIt matters not that the transaction may be looked upon as being somewhat in the nature of an exchange, and that the building of the new line may have involved a grant of no more, or even of less land, than may have been acquired by the construction of the old line. It involved a grant of land as to the new line and that the legislature had no right to make. Let us state the proposition in another form. If it were the right of the company, under the existing laws, to acquire lands by doing a specific thing, the legislature having no power under the constitution to make any grant of lands, could not confer upon it the right to earn lands by doing another a different thing. "So far we have discussed the question as if in passing the act of 1870 the legislature had intended to transfer the right of the company as to the lands to be acquired, from the old to the new line. But we find nothing in the act which manifests such an intention. On the contrary, the 12th section of the act as above quoted indicates, that it was not the purpose in any manner to extend the existing rights of the company with reference to the acquisition of lands from the State. "It is to be noted that the 3d section of the act of 1870 not only authorized the company to change its route so as to run to San Antonio, instead of Austin, but in addition thereto reserved to it the right to build upon the route formerly designated by the sold-out company. It is evident, therefore, that to concede to the company the right to earn lands by the construction of the new line involves a new and additional grant -a grant which the legislature, under the constitution of 1869, could have made neither expressly nor by implication." Railway Company v. State, 89 Texas, 340, 354; Quinlan v. Houston & Texas Central Railway, 89 Texas, 356; Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railway v. Texas, 81 Texas, 572. Opinion of the Court. In our judgment the constitutional provision as thus enforced involved no infraction of the Federal Constitution. The Galveston Company was not identical with the Buffalo Bayou Company, but a new company in succession to the old. The Buffalo Bayou Company became entitled to the benefits of the general law of January 30, 1854, by the first of the special acts of February 4, 1854, but by the supplemental special act of that date was restricted to the route to Austin, "with the right of extending their road from Austin to connect with any road running north of Austin towards the Pacific Ocean; provided, such connections be made between the ninety-sixth and ninety-eighth parallels of longitude; and provided further, that said company shall have no right to build branches from their main road." Construing these two acts together, as we must, the contract between the State and the Buffalo Bayou Company would appear to have been that the company would build a line of road to Austin and northerly to some line of road going west to the Pacific Ocean, and the State would give the company sixteen sections of land per mile, but the company was restricted to the particular line and had no right to build branches from the main line. The State did not contract with the old corporation to build the road from Columbus to San Antonio, and the new company could not claim to earn lands by building this road, by virtue of what the old company had been empowered to do. The old company did not possess the right by existing law to build the road in question or branch lines, and the authority to construct it was not given until July 27, 1870, at which time the constitution of Texas forbade the granting of lands to railroad companies. And if there were no contract prior to July 27, 1870, to give land for the construction of a line of road from Columbus to San Antonio and thence west, the constitution of 1869 could not operate to impair any such. But it is said that the right to a land grant of sixteen sections per mile under the act of 1854 had become a corporate franchise of the Buffalo Bayou Company, exercisable on every mile of road it might construct under competent legislative |