Have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress.

The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.

No one imagines that a law professing to tax will be permitted to destroy.

This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers.

It is the peculiar province of the legislature to prescribe general rules for the government of society; the application of those rules to individuals in society would seem to be the duty of other departments.

Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.

When a law is in its nature a contract, when absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights.