Joseph P. Bradley

“ Another argument made use of to show that the coupons are not set-offs, is that, by virtue of the agreement to receive them in payment, they inhere in the claim for taxes as a ground of extinguishment, and not as a distinct counter-demand. This cannot be true, because taxes imposed by the state, or by its authority, are pure and unmixed duties, accruing year by year for the public service, without any relation to, or dependence upon, collateral obligations. Whether the tax-payer has or has not any coupons is an accidental circumstance in no way affecting his taxes. ”

“ Whenever his life, liberty, or property is threatened, assailed, or invaded by unconstitutional acts, or by an attempt to execute unconstitutional laws, he may defend himself, in every proper way, by habeas corpus, by defense to prosecutions, by actions brought on his own behalf, by injunction, by mandamus. Any one of these modes of redress suitable to his case, is open to him. A citizen cannot, in any way, be harassed, injured, or destroyed by unconstitutional laws without having some legal means of resistance or redress. ”

“ As for the great mass of cases in which the remedies of mandamus and injunction have been sanctioned, to compel state officers to do, or refrain from doing, some act in which the plaintiff had an interest, they have generally been cases in which the law made it the duty of the officers to do the act commanded, or not to do the act forbidden. Those of a different character, as where a remedy has been taken away, have been purely cases of demands by one individual against another, and not of an individual against the state. ”

“ The right to all these means of protection and redress against unconstitutional oppression and exaction is a very different thing from the right to coerce the state into a fulfillment of its contracts. The one is an indefeasible right, a right which cannot be taken away ”

“ By subsequent legislation it has declared that the taxes must be paid in money, and that the tax collector must receive nothin else in payment, and that coupons, if offered, must be investigated in a juridical way to ascertain their genuineness before they will be paid, and when so ascertained, the provision for paying them is ample. The officers have no power but what the state gives them. ”

“ While this may be averred, (as it was averred in Texas v. White, 7 Wall. 700,) when the government of a state attempts to force the state from its constitutional relations with the United States, and to produce a disruption of the fundamental bonds of the national compact ”