In Reagan v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.57 an injunction was sustained against the attorney-general of a State and the members of a state board of railway commissioners, restraining them from putting into force a schedule of rates which the board, acting under statutory authority, had established. The jurisdiction of the lower federal court which had granted the writ was sustained, among other grounds, for the reason that the Eleventh Amendment did not apply to cases in which the States have not a pecuniary or proprietary interest, but only a governmental interest in the matter involved. The same position seems to have been accepted in Smyth v. Ames.58

In the Reagan case the court say: "So far from the State being the only real party in interest, and upon whom alone the judgment effectively operates, it has in a pecuniary sense no interest at all. Going back of all matters of form, the only parties pecuniarily affected are the shippers and the carriers, and the only direct pecuniary interest which the State can have arises when it abandons its governmental character, and, as an individual employs the railroad company to carry its property." "There is a sense, doubtless," the opinion continues, "in which it may be said that the State is interested in the question, but only a governmental sense. It is interested in the well-being of its citizens, in the just and equal enforcement of all its laws; but such governmental interest is not the pecuniary interest which causes it to bear the burden of an adverse judgment."

56 Citing with approval Board of Liquidation v. McComb, 92 U. S. 531; 23 L ed. 623.

Justice Harlan rendered a dissenting opinion in which he declared: "The difference between a suit against officers of the State, enjoining them from dug property of the citizen, in obedience to a void statute of the State, and a suit enjoining such officers from bringing under the order of the State, and in her name, an action which, it is alleged, will result in injury to the rights of the complainant, is not a difference that affects the jurisdiction of the court, but only its exercise of jurisdiction. If the former is not a suit against the State. the latter should not be deemed of that class."

57 154 U. S. 362 14 Sup. Ct, Rep. 1047; 38 L. ed. 1014.

58 169 U. S. 466; 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 418; 42 L. ed. 819.

The position here taken, it is to be observed, furnishes but one of the grounds upon which the decision of the case at bar is rested, and, it would seem, not a very strong one, especially if there be taken into consideration the position which has since been taken by the court in Missouri v. Illinois59 and Kansas v. Colorado60 that the State in its character as parens patrice may bring suit to maintain the general interests of its citizens.