Ward Hunt

“ We shall therefore consider the question as if that act exempting manufacturing property from taxation had been passed directly by Congress. It does not create a contract in the sense that it cannot be repealed. It has been frequently held that the incorporation of a company by special charter, with the exemption of its lands or other property from taxation, creates, upon the acceptance of the charter, a contract which will insure that exemption during the period specified. But the present case does not come within that rule. This is a bounty law, which is good as long as it remains unrepealed ”

“ We think that the system in regard to taxation, including what should be taxed, the rates, and the exemptions from taxation, was intended to be an independent one, to abolish existing impositions or exemptions, and to form a complete system of itself. ”

“ The exemption of manufacturing property, as we have shown, was a bounty merely revocable at any time by the legislature. The year following this expression of its bounty, in passing an act to obtain means 'for the support of the government and maintaining the credit thereof,' it enacts that 'there shall be levied on all real estate in said District . ”