to alter or recall the privilege granted. No other stipulation on the part of the State was ever suggested to exist, and it was the imagined existence of such stipulation alone which converted what else, in all its essential qualities as well as in its form, was an act of legislation, into a contract on the part of the community with the corporators. Without such stipulation, having an obligatory force, I am wholly unable to conceive the ground of difference between the charter of a corporation and any other act of legislation. If a statute lay no obligation on the State to do or refrain from doing a particular thing or one or more particular things, such an enactment seems to me to be a pure act of legislation, and in no sense a contract." "A law which seeks to deprive the Legislature of the power to tax must be so clear, explicit, and determinative that there can be neither doubt nor controversy about its terms, or the consideration which rendes it binding. Every presumption will be made against its surrender, as the power was committed by the people to the Government to be exercised, and not to be alienated." (47 Missouri, 158.)
And Justice Cooley (one of the justices of the Supreme Court of Michigan), in reviewing the action of the United States Supreme Court, says: "It is not very clear that this court has ever at any time expressly declared the right of a State to grant away the sovereign power of taxation." A court in Pennsylvania has also said: "Revenue is as essential to government as food to individuals; to sell it is to commit suicide." (30 Pennsylvania Statutes, 9.)
Turning to English jurisprudence, we have an opinion of Edmund Burke that the charter of the East India Company, in virtue of which great authority was exercised, "was a charter to establish monopoly and create power," and not entitled to the protection of the various charters of English liberty.
So long, however, as the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Dartmouth College case is not reversed by the same court, the above and many other like expressions of opinion on the part of judges and men learned in the law and in constitutional history have nothing of practical significance.
