In the light of the long-settled and well-known rules of the common law, establishing the distinction between suits against the king under the petition of right and suits against officers of the crown for violating the legal rights of individuals, it is most significant and persuasive, if not convincing, that the framers of the eleventh amendment confined its language to suits directly against a state, and did not attempt to prohibit suits against officers of a state when acting as its representatives. They could hardly have intended that such a principle as that "the king can do no wrong" should have any place in our system of government to the prejudice of the constitutional rights of individuals. We have no king to whom it can be applied. They surely did not intend to afford less protection and less redress against the invasion of the rights of citizens by those in power than was afforded in monarchical England to the subjects of the king. They could not have been ignorant of the famous cases which had established the legal responsibility of all officers of the English government and their subordination to the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts of justice. They must have contemplated that state statutes might be passed in conflict with the Constitution of the United States, and that these statutes would necessarily have to be enforced or attempts made to enforce them by state officers. And they must have appreciated that if state officers, as agents of their respective states, were granted immunity from suit in a court of the United States because they were acting for and on behalf of their states, the Constitution could in many respects be rendered wholly ineffective and nugatory.