comes regularly before the proper tribunal. Before a claim is proved, it must have come before the referee.

The trustee has no duty to perform in respect to the filing of claims. There is no provision anywhere in the act for filing claim with anyone save the referee, in referred cases. In so far as General Order XXI (1) seems to contemplate a "filing" with the trustee, it is confessedly at variance with the act. The act must prevail and where at variance therewith the General Orders are not to be considered. Collier, 4th ed. 286; West v. Lea, 2 Am. B. R. 463.

MR. JUSTICE PECKHAM, after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.

The question in this case resolves itself into one of the sufficiency of the presentation of proofs of claims of the creditors named in the foregoing statement. They were, in reality, presented and delivered to the trustee in bankruptcy before the expiration of one year after adjudication, but there was no actual filing of the claims with the referee until after the expiration of that time, when the attempt to file them with the petition was made as above stated.

The question turns upon the construction of some of the subdivisions of the fifty-seventh section of the Bankruptcy Act, together with the twenty-first General Order in Bankruptcy, the last part of which reads: "Proofs of debt received by any trustee shall be delivered to the referee to whom the case is referred."

Sub-section a of section 57 provides that "Proofs of claims shall consist of a statement under oath, in writing, signed by a creditor setting forth the claim, the consideration therefor, and whether any, and, if so what, securities are held therefor; and whether any, and, if so what, payments have been made thereon, and that the sum claimed is justly owing from the bankrupt to the creditor."

Sub-section c provides that "Claims after being proved may,

for the purpose of allowance, be filed by the claimants in the court where the proceedings are pending or before the referee if the case has been referred."

Sub-section d provides that "Claims which have been duly proved shall be allowed, upon receipt by or presentation to the court, unless objection to their allowance shall be made by parties in interest, or their consideration be continued for cause by the court upon its own motion."

Sub-section n provides that "Claims shall not be proved against a bankrupt estate subsequent to one year after the adjudication."

If the presentation and delivery of these proofs of claim in the case before us with the trustee was sufficient within the meaning of the Bankruptcy Act, then the referee should have proceeded to determine the question of their allowance, when presented to him, the same as if they had been filed with him personally within the year subsequent to adjudication.

We have been referred to no case in this court deciding the exact question, nor is there cited any case in the lower courts wherein it has been decided, with the exception of that of In re Seff, District Court of United States, Southern District of New York (not reported), where the question before us seems to have been directly before that court, and the decision was in favor of the sufficiency of the filing with the trustee. The parties hereto have cited a great many cases in the lower courts deciding questions somewhat analogous to the one now before us, but none in which this question has been decided. We, therefore, think it unnecessary to refer to them.

We are of opinion, taking into consideration the various provisions of the fifty-seventh section of the Bankruptcy Act, in connection with No. 21 of the General Orders in Bankruptcy, adopted by this court, that the presentation and delivery of proofs of claim to the trustee in bankruptcy within the year after the adjudication is a filing within the statute and the general order above mentioned.

The General Orders of this court are provided for by section

30 of the Bankruptcy Act, which enacts that, "All necessary rules, forms, and orders as to procedure and for carrying this act into force and effect shall be prescribed, and may be amended from time to time, by the Supreme Court of the United States." Under that section this court had the power to provide, as it has done in Order 21, that "Proofs of debt received by any trustee shall be delivered to the referee to whom the cause is referred." There is nothing in that provision inconsistent with, or opposed to, anything stated in the bankruptcy law upon the subject, and we must, therefore, take the statute and the order and read them together, the order being simply somewhat of an amplification of the law with respect to procedure, but nothing which can be construed as beyond the powers granted to the court by virtue of the law itself. The question is not whether anyone but the court or referee can pass upon a claim and allow it or disallow it. That must be done by the court or referee, but it is simply whether a delivery of a claim, properly proved, to the trustee is a sufficient filing. The law provides, sub-section c of section 57, that the claims, after being proved, may, for the purpose of allowance, be filed by the claimants in the court where the proceedings are pending, or before the referee, if the case has been referred; but that does not prohibit their being filed somewhere else prior to their allowance, and the Order in Bankruptcy in substance provides that they may be filed after being proved, with the trustee. Such order is equivalent to saying that proofs of debt (or claim) may be received by the trustee. When they are so received by him they are in legal effect received by the court, whose officer the trustee is. Having been received by the trustee, under authority of law, the proofs of debt are thereby sufficiently filed so far as the creditors are concerned, and it is the duty of the trustee to deliver them to the referee. If the trustee inadvertently neglects to perform that duty it is the neglect of an officer of the court, and the creditors are in no way responsible therefor. The presentation and filing have been made within the time provided for and with one of the proper

officers, and his failure to deliver to the referee cannot be held to be a failure on the part of the creditor to properly file his proofs.

Not much benefit can be derived from an examination of the Bankruptcy Act of 1867, in reference to the provisions therein contained, granting power to the Justices of the Supreme Court to frame general orders for the purpose named. See section 10, Bankruptcy Act of 1867. We think it plain that so far as this matter is concerned the Supreme Court had full power to make the General Order it did.

Different considerations, however, apply to the one claim made by the trustee himself. We do not think that in any event a trustee could file with himself his proof of his own claim against the estate of the bankrupt. General principles of law forbid that he should so act in his own case. And his delivery of his own claim to his attorney could not make such delivery stand in the place of a delivery to the referee.

These views lead to a reversal of the order of the Circuit Court of Appeals, and the affirmance of the order made by the District Court, with the modification, refusing the filing of the proof of claim of the trustee himself.

And it is so ordered.

AMERICAN SMELTING AND REFINING COMPANY v. COLORADO ex rel. LINDSLEY.

ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF COLORADO.

No. 143. Argued December 20, 21, 1906.-Decided January 7, 1907.

Although a State may impose different liabilities on foreign corporations than those imposed on domestic corporations, a statute that foreign corporations pay a fee based on their capital stock for the privilege of entering the State and doing business therein and thereupon shall be subjected to all liabilities and restrictions of domestic corporations amounts to a contract with foreign corporations complying therewith that they will not be subjected during the period for which they are

admitted to greater liabilities than those imposed on domestic corporations, and a subsequent statute imposing higher annual license fees on foreign, than on domestic, corporations for the privilege of continuing to do business, is void as impairing the obligation of such contract as to those corporations which have paid the entrance tax and received permits to do business; nor can such a tax be justified under the power to alter, amend and repeal reserved by the State Constitution. So held as to Colorado Statutes of 1897 and 1902.

30 Colorado, 275, reversed.

THE writ of error in this case brings up for review the judgment of the Supreme Court of Colorado, which affirmed the judgment of the trial court forfeiting the right of the plaintiff in error, hereinafter called the corporation, to do business as a foreign corporation within the State until a certain tax therein adjudged to be due should be paid. The corporation refused to pay the tax, and thereupon, at the instance of the District Attorney and the Attorney General of the State, a proceeding in the nature of quo warranto against the corporation was commenced for the purpose of obtaining a forfeiture of the franchise of the corporation for its failure to pay the "Annual State Corporation License Tax." The defense set up that the tax was a violation of the Federal Constitution as impairing the obligation of a contract, and in other particulars named. Upon the trial the court found that there was due to the State of Colorado the sum of $4,000, being the amount of the annual tax due by reason of the statute, which was held valid. A decree was thereupon entered, forfeiting the right of the corporation to do business within the limits of the State of Colorado until the tax was paid, and it was "absolutely and wholly deprived of all rights and privileges within the State of Colorado, until such tax is paid." Upon appeal to the Supreme Court of the State this judgment was affirmed, and the corporation then sued out this writ of error.

The corporation was incorporated April 4, 1899, in New Jersey, and it is permitted by its articles of incorporation to do business in other States, and to carry on a general ore reduction, milling, mining and other business mentioned in such