Opinion of the Court. neglect to follow them may be remedied by the legislature, unless its action in this respect is restrained by constitutional provisions prohibiting retrospective legislation. It is only necessary, therefore, in any case to consider whether the assessment could have been ordered originally without requiring the proceedings, the omission or defective performance of which is complained of, or without requiring them within the time designated. If they were not essential to any valid assessment, and therefore might have been omitted or performed at another time, their omission or defective performance may be cured by the same authority which directed them, provided, always, that intervening rights are not impaired." The vice which underlies the entire argument of the plaintiff in error arises from a failure to distinguish between the essentials of due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment, and matters which may or may not be essential under the terms of a state assessing or taxing law. The two are neither correlative or coterminous. The first, due process of law, must be found in the state statute, and cannot be departed from without violating the Constitution of the United States. The other depends on the lawmaking power of the State, and as it is solely the result of such authority may vary or change as the legislative will of the State sees fit to ordain. It follows that, to determine the existence of the one, due process of law, is the final province of this court, whilst the ascertainment of the other, that is, what is merely essential under the state statute, is a state question within the final jurisdiction of courts of last resort of the several States. When, then, a state court decides that a particular formality was or was not essential under the state statute, such decision presents no Federal question, providing always the statute as thus construed does not violate the Constitution of the United States, by depriving of property without due process of law. This paramount requirement being fulfilled, as to other matters the state interpretation of its own law is controlling and decisive. This distinction is pointed out by the decisions of this court. Pittsburg, Cincinnati &c. Railway v. Backus, Opinion of the Court. 154 U. S. 421; Kentucky Railroad Tax cases, 115 U. S. 321; Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U. S. 97. Bearing the foregoing elementary principle in mind, we will briefly notice the adjudicated cases upon which the plaintiff in error relies. The authorities referred to tending to establish that where the law requires an assessment to contain the name, the omission of the name renders the assessment void, are inapposite to the question under consideration. We are not here concerned with the meaning of the Louisiana statutes, or whether we would hold as an original proposition, were we construing them, that a defect in the name of the person assessed would not be a material variance. The Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana has construed the statutes of that State otherwise. The issue which we are to determine is not what interpretation should be given to the statutes of the State of Louisiana, but whether, accepting the meaning affixed to the statutes of that State by the court of last resort of the State, their provisions as so interpreted are repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, because not affording due process of law. The previous adjudications of the Supreme Court of Louisiana referred to by that court in its opinion and upon which it rested its decree in this case, in effect hold that under the Louisiana law a mistake in the name did not render the assessment void, and therefore that the conclusive presumption engendered by the Louisiana act of 1884 was not intended to, and did not make valid a wholly void assessment. Because in a case decided subsequently to the one now under review the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana has held that an assessment in the name of a person deceased rendered such assessment wholly void, it does not follow that the court thereby departed from the ruling which it had made in this case, and which had been by it rested upon a line of decisions declared by it to have conclusively settled the law of Louisiana on the subject, and which, in effect, it announced had become a rule of property in that State. The case of Marx v. Hanthorn, 148 U. S. 172, in no way conflicts with the foregoing considerations. That case came to Syllabus. this court on appeal from a Circuit Court of the United States, and its decision involved ascertaining the meaning of the tax laws of the State as interpreted by the court of last resort thereof. In performing this duty the court adopted and followed the construction given to the tax laws of the State by the Supreme Court of the State whence the case came. There is a claim asserted in argument that as a particular section of the act of 1884 provided that the sum of the bid at a tax sale should be paid into the state treasury, therefore it is clearly unconstitutional, since, in a case where the bid exceeded the taxes, the surplus money of the owner would go into the state treasury without provision for its repayment. But this is a mere abstract contention, since the fact is that the sum bid at the tax sale in question was less than the amount of the taxes assessed against the property. Dismissed for want of jurisdiction. PENN MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE CO. v. AUSTIN. APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS. No. 44. Argued April 23, 1897. - Decided January 3, 1898. The complainants in their bill predicated their right to relief upon the averment that certain ordinances adopted by the municipal authorities of Austin, and an act of the legislature of Texas referred to in their bill impaired the obligations of a contract which the bill alleged had been entered into with the complainants by the city of Austin, and that both the law of the State and the city ordinances were in contravention of the Constitution of the United States. Held, that these allegations plainly brought the case within the provision in the act of March 3, 1891, c. 517, 26 Stat. 826, conferring upon this court jurisdiction to review by direct appeal any final judgment rendered by a Circuit Court in any case in which the constitution or a law of a State is claimed to be in contravention of the Constitution of the United States. The reason upon which the rule that the mere assertion of a claim, unaccompanied by any act to give effect to the asserted right, cannot avail to keep alive a right which would otherwise be precluded because of laches, is based not alone upon the lapse of time during which the neglect to Statement of the Case. enforce the right has existed, but upon the change of condition which may have arisen during the period in which there has been neglect; and when a court of equity finds that the position of the parties has so changed that equitable relief cannot be afforded without doing injustice, or that the intervening rights of third persons may be destroyed or seriously impaired, it will not exert its equitable powers in order to save one from the consequences of his own neglect. The facts in this case bring it within that rule. THE Court below sustained a demurrer to and dismissed for want of equity the bill of the complainants, by which, as citizens of the States of Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York, respectively, they impleaded the defendants, the one a municipal corporation created by a law of the State of Texas, and its Mayor and Board of Public Works, citizens of the State of Texas, and the other a corporation organized under the authority of the general laws of the State of Texas regulating the formation of corporations, also a citizen of that State. The bill, which was filed on January 3, 1895, alleged in substance as follows: That the city of Austin was in 1892 a municipal corporation, and that for many years its inhabitants and the city itself for municipal purposes had been supplied with water by a corporation known as the City Water Company; that in 1882, in consequence of the growth of the city, both for the health of the people of the city, the safety of its property, and the development of its manufacturing industries, a larger supply of water was absolutely needed, and that the taxpayers presented a petition to the city authorities asking that an arrangement by contract or otherwise be at once made to afford the augmented water supply which was essential; that the municipality, being fully empowered by its charter to supply water and being authorized by the general laws of the State of Texas to make a contract for so doing, on the 13th day of April, 1882, did enter into a contract with the City Water Company to the end that a more copious supply of water should be furnished; that this contract gave to the company the right to furnish water for twenty years, with the privilege on the part of the city of buying at the end of ten years, or at any time on giving one year's notice, the Statement of the Case. water works which the contract required the company to erect; that the contract fixed a reasonable price to be paid for the use of water to be furnished by the water company, provided for the establishment of a given number of hydrants for the use of the city, and stipulated a rental therefor; that it imposed upon the corporation obligations of the most onerous character, compelling it to erect a large and costly plant, to lay extensive mains and pipes, and to extend them at any time during the life of the contract wherever the city might direct, and exacted that the company should add new hydrants for municipal uses as the city might require, giving to the water company as compensation in addition to the rentals to be paid by the city for hydrants, as above stated, a commutation of municipal taxation. The bill averred that the contract was in all respects advantageous to the city and beneficial to its inhabitants, and was indeed as to each and every obligation contained therein or resulting therefrom reasonable and just; that the city at the time the contract was entered into was not in a position to itself erect the works without inordinately increasing its burden of taxation, and that the contract contemplated that the water company should obtain the money to erect the works by issuing its negotiable bonds, since there was therein contained a stipulation that the money to become due for the rentals of the hydrants should be paid by the city to the trustee of any bonds which might be issued by the water company, so as to guarantee the prompt payment of the interest on any such bonds; that the water company, on the faith of the contract, issued to the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company its negotiable bonds for $250,000, secured them by mortgage upon all its property, present and prospective, and with the sum thus realized and other available resources, with integrity and fidelity and in complete compliance with every obligation resting on it, erected the desired water works plant, which afforded the desired supply of water; that of the bonds thus issued to the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, $100,000 in amount were bought for more than their face value in open market by the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, one of |