The relators are the holders of two judgments against the city of New Orleans,-one for $26,850, the other for $2,000. Both were recovered in the courts of Louisiana,-the first in June, 1877, by the relators; the second in June, 1874, by parties who assigned it to them. Both judgments were for damages done to the property of the plaintiffs therein by a mob or riotous assemblage of people in the year 1873. A statute of the state made municipal corporations liable for damages thus caused within their limits. Rev. St. La. 1870, § 2453. The judgments were duly registered in the office of the comptroller of the city, pursuant to the provisions of the act known as No. 5 of the extra session of 1870, and the present proceeding was taken by the relators to compel the authorities of the city to provide for their payment. At the time the injuries complained of were committed, and one of the judgments was recovered, the city of New Orleans was authorized to levy and collect a tax upon property within its limits of $1.75 upon every $100 of its assessed value. At the time the other judgment was recovered this limit of taxation was reduced to $1.50 on every $100 of the assessed value of the property. By the constitution of the state adopted in 1879 the power of the city to impose taxes on property within its limits was further restricted to 10 mills on the dollar of the valuation. The effect of this last limitation is to prevent the relators, who are not allowed to issue executions against the city, from collecting their judgments, as the funds receivable from the tax thus authorized to be levied are exhausted by the current expenses of the city, which must first be met. The relators sought in the state courts to compel a levy by the city of taxes to meet their judgments at the rate permitted when the damages were done for which the judgments were obtained. They contended that the subsequent limitation imposed upon its power violated that clause of the federal constitution which prohibits a state from passing a law impairing the obligation of contracts, and also that clause of the fourteenth amendment which forbids a state to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The supreme court of the state, reversing the lower court, decided against the relators, and the same contention is renewed here.
The right to reimbursement for damages caused by a mob or riotous assemblage of people is not founded upon any contract between the city and the sufferers. Its liability for the damages is created by a law of the legislature, and can be withdrawn or limited at its pleasure. Municipal corporations are instrumentalities of the state for the convenient administration of government within their limits. They are invested with authority to establish a police to guard against disturbance; and it is their duty to exercise their authority so as to prevent violence from any cause, and particularly from mobs and riotous assemblages. It has therefore been generally considered as a just burden cast upon them to require them to make good any loss sustained from the acts of such assemblages which they should have repressed. The imposition has been supposed to create, in the holders of property liable to taxation within their limits, an interest to discourage and prevent any movements tending to such violent proceedings. But, however considered, the imposition is simply a measure of legislative policy, in no respect resting upon contract, and subject, like all other measures of policy, to any change the legislature may see fit to make, either in the extent of the liability or in the means of its enforcement. And its character is not at all changed by the fact that the amount of loss, in pecuniary estimation, has been ascertained and established by the judgments rendered. The obligation to make indemnity created by the statute has no more element of contract in it because merged in the judgments than it had previously. The term 'contract' is used in the constitution in its ordinary sense, as signifying the agreement of two or more minds, for considerations proceeding from one to the other, to do or not to do certain acts. Mutual assent to its terms is of its very essence.