David Josiah Brewer

“ A tax upon their property has no such necessary effect. It leaves them free to discharge the duties they have undertaken to perform. A tax upon their operations is a direct obstruction to the exercise of federal powers.
'In this case the tax is laid upon the property of the railroad company, precisely as was the tax complained of in Thomson v. Railroad Co. It is not imposed upon the franchises, or the right of the company to exist and perform the functions for which it was brought into being, nor is it laid upon any act which the company has been authorized to do. ”

“ The Texas & Pacific Railway is a corporation organized under the laws of the United States (16 Stat. 573) ; and by reason of that fact it is earnestly insisted by counsel for it and the trust company that it is not subject to the control of the state, even as to rates for transportation wholly within the state. The argument is that it receives all its franchises from congress; that among those franchises is the right to charge and collect tolls ”

“ It is not the transmission of dispatches, nor the transportation of United States mails or troops or munitions of war, that is taxed, but it is, exclusively, the real and personal property of the agent, taxed in common with all other property in the state of a similar character. ”