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422 MCKIM v. ODOM.
party, and stop or embarrass its operations, merely for the purpose
of compelling its mayor, president, or directors, to answer to a suit
which had been brought against it. Indeed it would, in most in-
stances, be doing a gross injury to the public, only as a means of
reaching and coercing a delinquent corporator, whose separate and
personal interests could not be at all affected by any such proceed-
ing. For, the mayor and council of a city; the justices of a levy
court; the governors and visitors of a college; the president and
directors of a hospital, or the trustees of the poor, could not have
their private interests, in any manner, affected by the most destruc-
tive sequestration that could be made of the corporate property
which they held in their artificial capacity. Even with regard to
bodies politic of the second class, whose sole object is the aggran-
dizement of their own members, it certainly must be admitted to
be unjust to injure all, by an indiscriminate sequestration, merely
because some one, or a few of their members have been negligent,
or contumacious, in not answering to a suit as was required.
But as regards bodies politic of the third class, who collect for
their members private emolument from a public benefit, these and
other evils and embarrassments must arise from a rigid adherence
to the notion that such a corporation can only be forced to respond
to a suit against it by a distringas and sequestration of its pro-
perty. Take the case of a turnpike road company, that had re-
fused to answer a bill in Chancery. The road itself could not be
taken and closed by virtue of a distringas or sequestration; be-
cause that, as one of the highways of the Republic, could not, nor
ought not to be obstructed by any process whatever against those
whose only interest in it is the toll they are allowed to exact in
consideration of keeping it in repair. Consequently, in this in-
stance, the only method by which the court could effectually levy
upon its property, as a means of enforcing an answer, would
be to appoint a sequestrator, or receiver, to take the place of the
company's toll-gatherer at each gate along the whole line of the
road, (t)
The injury or ruin which might be brought upon a body politic
by the negligence or contumacy of its officers, as well as the great
delay and embarrassment in the administration of justice, that
must arise from confining the tribunal, before which it is sum!,
(f) Knapp v. Williams, 4 Ves. 430, note; Adley v. The Whitestable Company, 17
Ves. 324; S. C. 1 Meriv. 108; Ex parte Fowlser, 1 Jack. & Walk. 73, note;
Drewry v. Barnes, 3 Cond. Cha. Hep. 311.
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