Rufus Wheeler Peckham

“ It is a question whether equitable considerations can attach to a claim which, among other grounds, is based upon an act that was supposed by all the officers of the government to be valid, and which was repealed only when the whole taxing act of 1890 was subjected to a careful and comprehensive revision. There are occasions when the presumption that every man knows the law must be enforced for the safety of society itself. An individual on trial for a violation of the criminal law will not be heard to allege, as a defense, that he did not know the act of which he was guilty was criminal. ”

“ In the winter, spring, and summer of 1894 it is matter of history that the discussion of the tariff act, which finally became a law on the 28th of August of that year, was continually going on in congress and through the public prints of the country. Before the passage of the act it was, of course, wholly uncertain as to what its provisions would be, including the question of the bounty for the manufacture of sugar. No man could predict it. No one could have stated whether the bounty would be taken off entirely or materially reduced, or left as it stood by t e act of 1890. ”

“ The persons for whose benefit the appropriation contained in the act of 1895 was made are not, in the view we take, asserting the existence of a legal and valid debt against the United States which is at the same time based upon an unconstitutional act of congress. ”

“ Payments to individuals, no of right, or of a merely legal claim, but payments in the nature of a gratuity, yet having some feature of moral obligation to support them, have been made by the government, by virtue of acts of congress appropriating the public money, ever since its foundation. ”

“ Congress thus recognized as proper to be paid a class of claims which had not been taken into consideration by the Geneva tribunal, but which had been decided by that tribunal to have no basis in international law. It is a case, therefore, of the recognition by congress of what it regarded as an equitable claim on the part of the owners of these war risks to be paid some portion of their claims, and the validity of the appropriation was never questioned. ”

“ That company, which was a Louisiana corporation engaged in the sugar business, claimed that the repealing portion of the act of August 28, 1894, was not effective so as to cut off the rights of persons who had, prior to its passage, procured licenses for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 1894, and had expended money thereunder. The company therefore applied to the supreme court of the District of Columbia for a writ of mandamus against the secretary of the treasury and the commissioner of internal revenue to compel action on their part under the act of 1890. ”

“ In our opinion, it is not correct to say that no moral, equitable, or honorable obligation can attach in favor of persons situated as were the defendants in error here, when the act of 1895 was passed. ”

“ The commissioner of internal revenue, upon receiving the application and bond hereinbefore provided for, shall issue to the applicant a license to produce sugar from sorghum, beets or sugar cane grown within the United States, or from maple sap produced within the United States at the place and time with the machinery and by the methods described in the application ”