In Weston v. City Council of Charleston (1829) 27 U.S. 449, the plaintiffs, in state court, filed a "suggestion for a prohibition," an equity proceeding through which plaintiffs prayed that the city council be barred from assessing an allegedly unconstitutional tax. (Id. at 449.) The prohibition was granted, and appeal was taken to South Carolina's high court. The South Carolina court upheld the constitutionality of the tax, and plaintiffs, in turn, appealed to the Supreme Court. The question for the Court, then, was whether under the provision of the 1789 act in question, a writ of prohibition was a "suit." (Id. at 463.) Chief Justice Marshall, writing for the Court, construed the term "suit" broadly. That plaintiffs did not couch their pleading as stating a cause of action at law, and instead initiated an equity proceeding, made no difference to the Chief Justice: "The modes of proceeding may be various, but if a right is litigated between parties in a court of justice, the proceeding by which the decision of the court is sought, is a suit" (Id.) Chief Justice Marshall in passing upon the question of the right of a state to levy a tax upon a government bond, declared that such bond evidences a debt created by the exercise of power of the United States to borrow money, and that the bond constitutes a contract between the United States Government and the individual who purchased it. The court then said: " A contract made by the government in the exercise of its power, to borrow money on the credit of the United States, is undoubtedly independent of the will of any state in which the individual who lends may reside, and is undoubtedly, an operation essential to the important objects for which the government was created." The generally accepted definition of the term "suit" is that of Chief Justice Marshall in Weston v. City of Charleston. He said: "Is a writ of prohibition a suit? "The term is certainly a very comprehensive one, and is understood to apply to any proceeding in a court of justice, by which an individual pursues that remedy in a court of justice which the law affords him. The modes of proceeding may be various, but if a right is litigated between the parties in a court of justice, the proceeding by which the decision of the court is sought is a suit." In that case a writ of prohibition was issued, restraining the city of Charleston from collecting taxes claimed to be due it by Weston. No suit or action had been begun by the city, but Weston sued out a writ of prohibition restraining the city from collecting the taxes claimed. The state court reversed the order granting the writ, overruled the ground on which the writ was sued out, and dismissed it. No judgment was or could have been there rendered, awarding the city the right to recover the tax. In response to a motion to dismiss the appeal, the court said: "We think also, that it was a final judgment, in the sense in which that term is used in the 25th section of the judiciary act. If it were applicable to those judgments and decrees only in which the right was finally decided, and could never again be litigated between the parties, the provisions of the section would be confined within much narrower limits than the words import, or than Congress could have intended. Judgments in action of ejectment, and decrees in chancery, dismissing a bill, without prejudice, however deeply they might affect rights protected by the constitution, laws or treaties of the United States, would not be subject to the revision of this court. . . . The word `final' must be understood in the section under consideration, as applying to all judgments and decrees which determine the particular cause."