Henry Billings Brown

“ If the law be a mere offer of a bounty, it may be withdrawn at any time, notwithstanding the recipients of such bounty may have incurred expense upon the faith of such offer. Thus, the legislature of the state of Michigan, desiring to encourage the manufacture of salt, which had been recently discovered in the Saginaw valley, in 1859, offered exemption from taxation and a bounty of 10 cents per bushel to all individuals, companies, or corporations formed for the purpose of boring for and manufacturing salt. ”

“ The question turned upon the exemption of certain property which was devised to it 20 years after it was incorporated, the revenues of which were applied to enable it to carry on its work; but it was held that the contract applied not only to property in existence when the charter was granted, nor only to that which was in existence when the constitution of 1868 was adopted, but to all which might afterwards be acquired in the due fulfillment of the purposes of the institution. ”

“ The consequence of a different decision in this case might easily have become disastrous, since the arguments which were urged upon this court at that time would have been equally forceful at any time thereafter, and the state might have found itself bound by a perpetual pledge to pay 10 cents upon every bushel of salt thereafter manufactured by the companies which had embarked in the enterprise under the encouragement of the bounty. ”