The Supreme Court of the United States has held in an unqualified manner, that as between a State and an office-holder, there is no contract right possessed by the latter either to the office or to the salary attached to it, and that, therefore, in the absence of express constitutional provision otherwise, his removal from office or the abolishment of the office itself gives to him no cause of action against the State. Thus in Butler v. Pennsylvania18 after defining vested private rights of property, the court said: "The contracts designed to be protected by the tenth section of the first article of that instrument are contracts by which perfect rights, certain definite, fixed, private rights of property, are vested. These are clearly distinguishable from measures or engagements adopted or undertaken by the body politic or state government for the benefit of all, and from the necessity of the case, and according to universal understanding, to be varied or discontinued as the public shall require. The selection of officers, who are nothing more than agents for the effectuating of public purposes, is matter of public convenience or necessity, and so, too, are the periods for the appointment of such agents; but neither the one nor the other of these arrangements can constitute any obligation to continue such agents, or to reappoint them, after the measures which brought them into being shall have been found useless, shall have been fulfilled, or shall have been abrogated as even detrimental to the well-being of the public. The promised compensation for services actually performed and accepted, during the continuance of the particular agency, may undoubtedly be claimed, both upon principle of compact and of equity; but to insist beyond this on the perpetuation of a public policy either useless or detrimental, and upon a reward for acts neither desired nor promised, would appear to be neither reconcilable with natural justice nor with common sense. The establishment of such a principle would arrest necessarily everything like progress or improvement in government; or if changes would be ventured upon, the government would have to become one great pension establishment on which to quarter a host of sinecures. It would especially be difficult, if not impracticable, in this view, ever to remodel the organic law of a State, as constitutional ordinances must be of higher order and more immutable than common legislative enactments, and there could not exist conflicting constitutional ordinances under one and the same system. It follows, then, upon principle, that, in every perfect and competent government, there must exist a general power to enact and to repeal laws; and to create, and change or discontinue, the agents designated for the preservation of the body politic, and for the safety of the individuals of the community. It is true that this power or the ex tent of its exercise may be controlled by higher organic law or the Constitution of the State, as is the case in some instances in the state Constitutions, and is exemplified in the provision of the federal Constitution relied on in this case by the plaintiffs in error, and in some other clauses of the same instrument; but where no such restriction is imposed, the power must rest in the discretion of the government alone."

18 10 How. 402: 13 L. ed. 472.

Again, summing up the law on this subject, the Supreme Court in Taylor v. Beckham19 sav: "The decisions are numerous to the effect that public offices are mere agencies or trusts, and not property as such. Nor are the salary and emoluments property secured by contract, but compensation for services actually rendered. Nor does the fact that a constitution may forbid the legislature from abolishing a public office or diminishing the salary thereof during the term of the incumbent, change its character or make it property. True, the restrictions limit the power of the legislature to deal with the office, but even such restrictions may be removed by constitutional amendment In short, generally speaking, the nature of the relation of a public officer to the public is inconsistent either with a property or contract right"20

19 178 U. S. 548; 20 Sup. Ct. Rep. 890; 44 L. ed. 1187.