In Republic Life Insurance Co. v. Swigert, 135 Ill. 150, 25 N.E. 680 (1890), the state auditor filed a petition against Republic Life Insurance Company under the dissolution statute then in effect. The auditor sought to compel the corporation's stockholders to pay for subscriptions to stock which had been surrendered to the corporation. In holding for the stockholders, the supreme court pointed out that "there were no debts due the company from the stockholders here in question." Swigert, 135 Ill. at 175. The court described the receiver's powers as follows: "A receiver, virtute officii, and without regard to any expansion of his powers by statute or by an authorized decree of court, is only a custodian of property. He is ordinarily, in respect to his title and in respect to the litigations in which he may engage, merely the representative of the owners of the property submitted to his control. But, so far as his powers are derived from a statute or from a lawful decree of court, and the powers do not involve rights which, at the time of his appointment, were vested in such owners, he is not merely their representative, but is the instrument of the law and the agent of the court which appointed him. Such right and authority as the law and the court rightfully give him he possesses, and, in respect to such right he is not circumscribed and limited by the right which was vested in and available to the owners. Nor is it provided in the statute, nor legitimately deducible therefrom, as is the case in respect to the statutes in force in some jurisdictions, that the receiver may represent creditors, and bring suits to set aside acts of the persons or corporations whose property is in charge of the receivers, which were in fraud of such creditors. The legislature has made no provision of this kind, and in its absence it does not devolve upon the courts, by judicial legislation, to assume a jurisdiction that they have not heretofore possessed." Swigert, 135 Ill. at 176-78.