To obtain a just compromise, concession must not only mutual-it must be equal also....There can be no hope that either will yield more than it gets in return.

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

The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.

An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.

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.

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.

Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.