Opinion of the Court. 300 U.S. 1 value thereof, in addition to the amount invested in such stock . . . and the liability of such stockholders shall be an asset of the corporation for the benefit ratably of all the depositors and creditors of any such corporation, if necessary to pay the debts of such corporation, and shall be enforceable only by appropriate proceedings by a receiver, assignee or trustee of such corporation acting under the orders of a court of competent jurisdiction.” A like remedy had previously been created against stockholders in trust companies. Acts of 1904, c. 101; Acts of 1908, c. 153. Through these amendatory acts, the cause of action formerly enforcible by the creditors separately, each suing for himself, became enforcible by the receiver as the representative of all. As a consequence of the new procedure, the assessment was to be laid upon all the holders of shares at the time of liquidation without reference to their relation to the bank at the creation of the debts, though stockholders dropping out sooner might escape a liability which under the earlier law would have clung to them indefinitely. Moreover, offsets and counterclaims were no longer to be available to reduce the several assessments and thus establish inequality. Stockholders when sued by the receiver would contribute to the fund ratably, and then prove their claims against the bank in the same way as other creditors. Such in outline is the effect of the statutory changes as the highest court of Maryland has defined them in this very case. Do changes of that order impair the obligation of a contract between the corporation and the stockholders in contravention of the provisions of the Constitution of the United States? The answer must be “no,” and this for two reasons, first, because the changes are directed to the implementing remedies rather than the substantive liability, and second, because a change of substantive liability was made permissible by the reservation of a power of alteration or repeal. (1) The obligation laid upon the shareholders by the Maryland Constitution, though susceptible of legislative and judicial regulation in respect of the mode of its enforcement, was a substantive liability to which every stockholder subjected himself upon the acquisition of his stock. The legislature did not exhaust the measure of that constitutional liability by the creation of a particular remedial device. The remedy adopted was interpreted judicially as having in view a suit by a creditor against the particular group of stockholders who had undertaken by implication to answer for his debt. This does not mean that a different form of remedy, for example a suit by a receiver, would have been a departure from the Constitution, if the statute had prescribed that method of enforcement. The broad but indefinite words of the constitutional command gave permission to the legislature to establish any remedies reasonably appropriate to the general end in view. Cf. Whitman v. Oxford National Bank, 176 U. S. 559, 562; Bernheimer v. Converse, 206 U. S. 516, 529. So, the broad but indefinite words of the legislation first adopted, the Act of 1870, gave freedom to the courts to develop through the process of construction a cause of action enforcible at the instance of a creditor without asserting in so doing that a different cause of action, enforcible through a receiver, would have been an inappropriate implement of the constitutional liability, in the event that the legislature or the courts had chosen to adopt it. Stockholders who became such while the first statute was in force were chargeable with notice that a new remedy might be adopted if the one first chosen was inadequate. They would have been chargeable with such notice though nothing had been said. They were chargeable, as it happens, by the wording of the statute, the charter being Opinion of the Court. 300 U.S. granted upon the condition that the Act or any part of it might be altered or repealed. The remedy first established was found to be unworkable. Ghingher v. Bachtell, supra, at p. 692; Murphy v. Wheatley, 102 Md. 501, 515; 63 Atl. 62. Still acting within the limits of the constitutional command, the legislature of Maryland announced another remedy, less unwieldy and confusing. In the view of the state court, the substantive liability as the Constitution had created it was the same under the new procedure as it had been from the beginning. Ghingher v. Bachtell, supra. The court was far from holding that the statute had enlarged it. What had happened was merely this, that another remedy had been established to implement' a liability created long ago. Cf. Pittsburgh Steel Co. v. Baltimore Equitable Society, 226 U. S. 455; Hillv. Merchants' Mutual Ins. Co., 134 U. S. 515; Fourth National Bank v. Francklyn, 120 U. S. 747; 755; Shriver v. Woodbine Savings Bank, 285 U. S. 467, 474, 479. We cannot see in this an attempt to lay upon the stockholders by force of later legislation a new and different burden from that accepted at the outset. Nor would it help the appellants anything to assume in their behalf that the Constitution of the State has been given a new meaning, if the new meaning is not due to the compulsion of a statute. Change by judicial construction of antecedent legislation does not impair a contract, at least in the forbidden sense, if it be granted arguendo that such a change can be discovered. Tidal Oil Co. v. Flanagan, 263 U. S. 444, 450; Fleming v. Fleming, 264 U. S. 29, 31; Brinkerhof-Faris Co. v. Hill, 281 U. S. 673, 680; Great Northern Ry. Co. v. Sunburst Oil & Refining Co., 287 U. S. 358, 364. The new meaning, if there is any, is not ascribed to the Constitution because a later statute has said it must be done. The new meaning is the product of the independent judg ment of a court. So the state court has told us, and the good faith of its declaration is not successfully impeached. Broad River Power Co. v. South Carolina, 281 U. S. 537, 540. To changes thus wrought the Constitution of the United States does not offer an impediment. (2) The result would not be different if the effect of the statutory amendments were to be viewed as an enlargement of the substantive liability for debts afterwards contracted, the enlargement being applicable to stockholders without exception, present as well as future. The charter was accepted subject to the condition that the personal liability then prescribed by statute should be subject thereafter to repeal or alteration. This court has held that when such a condition attaches to a charter, there is no unconstitutional change of the obligation of a contract by a subsequent enlargement of the liability of stockholders as to debts afterwards contracted, though the shares so affected were acquired before the change was made. Sherman v. Smith, 1 Black 587, affirming 21 N. Y. 9; Looker v. Maynard, 179 U. S. 46, 53; cf. McGowan v. McDonald, 111 Cal. 57, 66: 43 Pac. 418; Perkins v. Coffin, 84 Conn. 275, 295; 79 Atl. 1070; Pate v. Bank of Newton, 116 Miss. 666, 686; 77 So. 601. Stockholders who subscribe to stock subject to such a condition assume the risk that their relation to the corporation may be altered to their prejudice. Nor is their position any stronger because the new liability is heavier (if so it be assumed to be) than that imposed upon them directly by the Constitution of the State. The constitutional liability is not a maximum, but a minimum, and the legislature does not transcend the bounds of legislative power by increasing it thereafter. Murphy v. Wheatley, supra, pp. 514, 515, 516; Davis v. Moore, 130 Ark. 128, 135; 197 S. W. 295; Parker v. Carolina Savings Bank, 53 S. C. 583, 592; 31 S. E. 673; Duke v. Force, 120 Wash. 599, 606; 208 Pac. 67. Opinion of the Court. 300 U.S. Sherman v. Smith, supra, left unanswered an inquiry (1 Black at p. 594) whether the amendment would have gone too far if it had been made applicable to debts existing at the date of its enactment as well as to existing stockholders. We may leave the question open now. Appellants have failed to show that any debts of the corporation to be enforced in these proceedings were debts existing on June 1, 1910, when the present statute became law, still less that the subtraction of those debts would have made the assessment lower than the par value of the shares. The extent of the deficiency is persuasive, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that the assessment must have been the same if the old debts had been disregarded. Such of them as exist must have been contracted in the brief interval between January 24, 1910 and June 1 following. At all events, the burden was on the appellants to show themselves harmed through the operation of the statute challenged as unlawful. Premier-Pabst Sales Co. v. Grosscup, 298 U. S. 226, 227; Hatch v. Reardon, 204 U. S. 152, 160, 161. This they have not done. As to debts to be contracted afterwards, if not also as to others, the statute is impregnable. What has been written is not at war with anything decided or even intimated in Coombes v. Getz, 285 U. S. 434, 441, 442, much relied on by appellants. There creditors were complaining of the destruction of a cause of action whereby they were left without a remedy. Here the record does not tell us that any creditors who were such when the first statute was repealed have claims still outstanding for debts contracted then. In the usual course of business deposits made so long ago must almost certainly have been paid through the application of the principle that the first drawings out are to be attributed to the first payments in. Carson v. Federal Reserve Bank, 254 N. Y. 218, 232; 172 N. E. 475. At |