The Sanctity Of Contracts
Marshall's work was one of conservation in so far as it was concerned
with interpreting the Constitution in accord with the intention which
its framers had of establishing an efficient National Government. But he
found a task of restoration awaiting him in that great field of
Constitutional Law which defines state powers in relation to private
rights.
To provide adequate safeguards for property and contracts against state
legislative power was one of the most important objects of the framers,
if indeed it was not the most important. Consider, for instance, a
colloquy which occurred early in the Convention between Madison and
Sherman of Connecticut. The latter had enumerated "the objects of Union"
as follows: "First, defense against foreign danger; secondly, against
internal disputes and a resort to force; thirdly, treaties with foreign
nations; fourthly, regulating foreign commerce and drawing revenue from
it." To this statement Madison demurred. The objects mentioned were
important, he admitted, but he "combined with them the necessity of
providing more effectually for the securing of private rights and the
steady dispensation of justice. Interferences with these were evils
which had, more perhaps than anything else, produced this Convention."
Marshall's sympathy with this point of view we have already noted. ¹ Nor
was Madison's reference solely to the then recent activity of state
Legislatures in behalf of the much embarrassed but politically dominant
small farmer class. He had also in mind that other and more ancient
practice of Legislatures of enacting so-called "special legislation,"
that is, legislation altering under the standing law the rights of
designated parties, and not infrequently to their serious detriment.
Usually such legislation took the form of an intervention by the
Legislature in private controversies pending in, or already decided by,
the ordinary courts, with the result that judgments were set aside,
executions canceled, new hearings granted, new rules of evidence
introduced, void wills validated, valid contracts voided, forfeitures
pronounced--all by legislative mandate. Since that day the courts have
developed an interpretation of the principle of the separation of powers
and have enunciated a theory of "due process of law," which renders this
sort of legislative abuse quite impossible; but in 1787, though the
principle of the separation of powers had received verbal recognition in
several of the state Constitutions, no one as yet knew precisely what
the term "legislative power" signified, and at that time judicial review
did not exist. ² Hence those who wished to see this nuisance of special
legislation abated felt not unnaturally that the relief must come from
some source external to the local governments, and they welcomed the
movement for a new national Constitution as affording them their
opportunity.
¹ See supra, p. 34 ff.
² On special legislation, see the writer's Doctrine of Judicial Review
(Princeton, 1914), pp. 36-37, 69-71.
The Constitution, in Article I, Section X, forbids the States to "emit
bills of credit, make anything but gold and silver a legal tender in
payment of debts, pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law
impairing the obligation of contracts." Until 1798, the provision
generally regarded as offering the most promising weapon against special
legislation was the ex post facto clause. In that year, however, in its
decision in Calder vs. Bull the Court held that this clause "was not
inserted to secure the citizen in his private rights of either property
or contracts," but only against certain kinds of penal legislation. The
decision roused sharp criticism and the judges themselves seemed fairly
to repent of it even in handing it down. Justice Chase, indeed, even
went so far as to suggest, as a sort of stop-gap to the breach they were
thus creating in the Constitution, the idea that, even in the absence of
written constitutional restrictions, the Social Compact as well as "the
principles of our free republican governments" afforded judicially
enforcible limitations upon legislative power in favor of private
rights. Then, in the years immediately following, several state courts,
building upon this dictum, had definitely announced their intention of
treating as void all legislation which they found unduly to disturb
vested rights, especially if it was confined in its operation to
specified parties. ¹
¹ In connection with this paragraph, see the writer's article entitled
The Basic Doctrine of American Constitutional Law, in the Michigan Law
Review, February, 1914. Marshall once wrote Story regarding his attitude
toward Section X in 1787, as follows: "The questions which were
perpetually recurring in the State legislatures and which brought
annually into doubt principles which I thought most sacred, which proved
that everything was afloat, and that we had no safe anchorage ground,
gave a high value in my estimation to that article of the Constitution
which imposes restrictions on the States." Discourse.
Such was still the situation when the case of Fletcher vs. Peck ¹ in
1810 raised before the Supreme Court the question whether the Georgia
Legislature had the right to rescind a land grant made by a preceding
Legislature. On any of three grounds Marshall might easily have disposed
of this case before coming to the principal question. In the first
place, it was palpably a moot case; that is to say, it was to the
interest of the opposing parties to have the rescinding act set aside.
The Court would not today take jurisdiction of such a case, but Marshall
does not even suggest such a solution of the question, though Justice
Johnson does in his concurring opinion. In the second place, Georgia's
own claim to the lands had been most questionable, and consequently her
right to grant them to others was equally dubious; but this, too, is an
issue which Marshall avoids. Finally, the grant had been procured by
corrupt means, but Marshall ruled that this was not a subject the Court
might enter upon; and for the ordinary run of cases in which undue
influence is alleged to have induced the enactment of a law, the ruling
is clearly sound. But this was no ordinary case. The fraud asserted
against the grant was a matter of universal notoriety; it was, indeed,
the most resounding scandal of the generation; and surely judges may
assume to know what is known to all and may act upon their knowledge.
¹ 6 Cranch, 87.
Furthermore, when one turns to the part of Marshall's opinion which
deals with the constitutional issue, one finds not a little evidence of
personal predilection on the part of the Chief Justice. He starts out by
declaring the rescinding act void as a violation of vested rights, of
the underlying principles of society and government, and of the doctrine
of the separation of powers. Then he apparently realizes that a decision
based on such grounds must be far less secure and much less generally
available than one based on the words of the Constitution; whereupon he
brings forward the obligation of contracts clause. At once, however, he
is confronted with the difficulty that the obligation of a contract is
the obligation of a contract still to be fulfilled, and that a grant is
an executed contract over and done with--functus officio. This
difficulty he meets by asserting that every grant is attended by an
implied contract on the part of the grantor not to reassert his right to
the thing granted. This, of course, is a palpable fiction on Marshall's
part, though certainly not an unreasonable one. For undoubtedly when a
grant is made without stipulation to the contrary, both parties assume
that it will be permanent.
The greater difficulty arose from the fact that, whether implied or
explicit, the contract before the Court was a public one. In the case of
private contracts it is easy enough to distinguish the contract, as the
agreement between the parties, from the obligation of the contract which
comes from the law and holds the parties to their engagements. But what
law was there to hold Georgia to her supposed agreement not to rescind
the grant she had made? Not the Constitution of the United States
unattended by any other law, since it protects the obligation only after
it has come into existence. Not the Constitution of Georgia as construed
by her own courts, since they had sustained the rescinding act. Only one
possibility remained; the State Constitution must be the source of the
obligation--yes; but the State Constitution as it was construed by the
United States Supreme Court in this very case, in the light of the
"general principles of our political institutions." In short the
obligation is a moral one; and this moral obligation is treated by
Marshall as having been converted into a legal one by the United States
Constitution.
However, Marshall apparently fails to find entire satisfaction in this
argument, for he next turns to the prohibition against bills of
attainder and ex post facto laws with a question which manifests
disapproval of the decision in Calder vs. Bull. Yet he hesitates to
overrule Calder vs. Bull, and, indeed, even at the very end of his
opinion he still declines to indicate clearly the basis of his decision.
The State of Georgia, he says, "was restrained" from the passing of the
rescinding act "either by general principles which are common to our
free institutions, or by particular provisions of the Constitution of
the United States." It was not until nine years after Fletcher vs. Peck
that this ambiguity was cleared up in the Dartmouth College case in
1819.
The case of the Trustees of Dartmouth College vs. Woodward ¹ was a New
England product and redolent of the soil from which it sprang. In 1754
the Reverend Eleazar Wheelock of Connecticut had established at his own
expense a charity school for instructing Indians in the Christian
religion; and so great was his success that he felt encouraged to extend
the undertaking and to solicit donations in England. Again success
rewarded his efforts; and in 1769 Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire,
George III's representative granted the new institution, which was now
located at Hanover, New Hampshire, a charter incorporating twelve named
persons as "The Trustees of Dartmouth College" with the power to govern
the institution, appoint its officers, and fill all vacancies in their
own body "forever."
¹ The following account of this case is based on J. M. Shirley's
Dartmouth College Causes (St. Louis, 1879) and on the official report, 4
Wheaton, 518.
For many years after the Revolution, the Trustees of Dartmouth College,
several of whom were ministers, reflected the spirit of
Congregationalism. Though this form of worship occupied almost the
position of a state religion in New Hampshire, early in this period
difficulties arose in the midst of the church at Hanover. A certain
Samuel Hayes, or Haze, told a woman named Rachel Murch that her
character was "as black as Hell," and upon Rachel's complaint to the
session, he was "churched" for "breach of the Ninth Commandment and also
for a violation of his covenant agreement." This incident caused a rift
which gradually developed into something very like a schism in the local
congregation, and this internal disagreement finally produced a split
between Eleazar's son, Dr. John Wheelock, who was now president of
Dartmouth College, and the Trustees of the institution. The result was
that in August, 1815, the Trustees ousted Wheelock.
The quarrel had thus far involved only Calvinists and Federalists, but
in 1816 a new element was brought in by the interference of the Governor
of New Hampshire, William Plumer, formerly a Federalist but now, since
1812, the leader of the Jeffersonian party in the State. In a message to
the Legislature dated June 6, 1816, Plumer drew the attention of that
body to Dartmouth College. "All literary establishments," said he, "like
everything human, if not duly attended to, are subject to decay.... As
it [the charter of the College] emanated from royalty, it contained, as
was natural it should, principles congenial to monarchy," and he cited
particularly the power of the Board of Trustees to perpetuate itself.
"This last principle," he continued, "is hostile to the spirit and
genius of a free government. Sound policy therefore requires that the
mode of election should be changed and that Trustees in future should be
elected by some other body of men.... The College was formed for the
public good, not for the benefit or emolument of its Trustees; and the
right to amend and improve acts of incorporation of this nature has been
exercised by all governments, both monarchical and republican."
Plumer sent a copy of his message to Jefferson and received a
characteristic answer in reply: "It is replete," said the Republican
sage, "with sound principles.... The idea that institutions established
for the use of the nation cannot be touched nor modified, even to make
them answer their end ... is most absurd.... Yet our lawyers and priests
generally inculcate this doctrine, and suppose that preceding
generations held the earth more freely than we do; had a right to impose
laws on us, unalterable by ourselves; ... in fine, that the earth
belongs to the dead and not to the living." And so, too, apparently the
majority of the Legislature believed; for by the measure which it
promptly passed, in response to Plumer's message, the College was made
Dartmouth University, the number of its trustees was increased to
twenty-one, the appointment of the additional members being given to the
Governor, and a board of overseers, also largely of gubernatorial
appointment, was created to supervise all important acts of the
trustees.
The friends of the College at once denounced the measure as void under
both the State and the United States Constitution and soon made up a
test case. In order to obtain the college seal, charter, and records, a
mandate was issued early in 1817 by a local court to attach goods, to
the value of $50,000, belonging to William H. Woodward, the Secretary
and Treasurer of the "University." This was served by attaching a chair
"valued at one dollar." The story is also related that authorities of
the College, apprehending an argument that the institution had already
forfeited its charter on account of having ceased to minister to
Indians, sent across into Canada for some of the aborigines, and that
three were brought down the river to receive matriculation, but becoming
panic-stricken as they neared the town, leaped into the water, swam
ashore, and disappeared in the forest. Unfortunately this interesting
tale has been seriously questioned.
The attorneys of the College before the Superior Court were Jeremiah
Mason, one of the best lawyers of the day, Jeremiah Smith, a former
Chief Justice of New Hampshire, and Daniel Webster. These three able
lawyers argued that the amending act exceeded "the rightful ends of
legislative power," violated the principle of the separation of powers,
and deprived the trustees of their "privileges and immunities" contrary
to the "law of the land" clause of the State Constitution, and impaired
the obligation of contracts. The last contention stirred Woodward's
attorneys, Bartlett and Sullivan, to ridicule. "By the same reasoning,"
said the latter, "every law must be considered in the nature of a
contract, until the Legislature would find themselves in such a
labyrinth of contracts, with the United States Constitution over their
heads, that not a subject would be left within their jurisdiction"; the
argument was an expedient of desperation, he said, a "last straw." The
principal contention advanced in behalf of the Act was that the College
was "a public corporation," whose "various powers, capacities, and
franchises all ... were to be exercised for the benefit of the public,"
and were therefore subject to public control. And the Court, in
sustaining the Act, rested its decision on the same ground. Chief
Justice Richardson conceded the doctrine of Fletcher vs. Peck, that the
obligation of contracts clause "embraced all contracts relating to
private property, whether executed or executory, and whether between
individuals, between States, or between States and individuals," but, he
urged, "a distinction is to be taken between particular grants by the
Legislature of property or privileges to individuals for their own
benefit, and grants of power and authority to be exercised for public
purposes." Its public character, in short, left the College and its
holdings at the disposal of the Legislature.
Of the later proceedings, involving the appeal to Washington and the
argument before Marshall, early in March, 1818, tradition has made
Webster the central and compelling figure, and to the words which it
assigns him in closing his address before the Court has largely been
attributed the great legal triumph which presently followed. The story
is, at least, so well found that the chronicler of Dartmouth College vs.
Woodward who should venture to omit it must be a bold man indeed.
The argument ended [runs the tale], Mr. Webster stood for some moments
silent before the Court, while every eye was fixed intently upon him. At
length, addressing the Chief Justice, he proceeded thus: "This, sir, is
my case. It is the case ... of every college in our land.... Sir, you
may destroy this little institution.... You may put it out. But if you
do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after
another, all those greater lights of science, which, for more than a
century have thrown their radiance over our land. It is, Sir, as I have
said, a small college. And yet there are those who love it--"
Here, the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down,
broke forth, his lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion,
his eyes filled with tears.... The court-room during these two or three
minutes presented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall,
with his tall and gaunt figure bent over, as if to catch the slightest
whisper, the deep furrows of his cheek expanded with emotion, and his
eyes suffused with tears; Mr. Justice Washington at his side, with small
and emaciated frame, and countenance more like marble than I ever saw on
any other human being.... There was not one among the strong-minded men
of that assembly who could think it unmanly to weep, when he saw
standing before him the man who had made such an argument, melted into
the tenderness of a child.
Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and, fixing his keen eyes
on Chief Justice Marshall, said in that deep tone with which he
sometimes thrilled the heart of an audience: "Sir, I know not how others
may feel ... but for myself, when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like
Cæsar in the Senate house, by those who are reiterating stab after stab,
I would not, for my right hand, have her turn to me and say, Et tu
quoque mi fili! And thou, too, my son!"
Whether this extraordinary scene, first described thirty-four years
afterward by a putative witness of it, ever really occurred or not, it
is today impossible to say. ¹ But at least it would be an error to
attribute to it great importance. From the same source we have it that
at Exeter, too, Webster had made the judges weep--yet they had gone out
and decided against him. Judges do not always decide the way they weep!
¹ Professor Goodrich of Yale, who is responsible for the story,
communicated it to Rufus Choate in 1853. It next appears on Goodrich's
authority in Curtis's Webster, vol. II, pp. 169-71.
Of the strictly legal part of his argument Webster himself has left us a
synopsis. Fully three-quarters of it dealt with the questions which had
been discussed by Mason before the State Supreme Court under the New
Hampshire Constitution and was largely irrelevant to the great point at
issue at Washington. Joseph Hopkinson, who was now associated with
Webster, contributed far more to the content of Marshall's opinion; yet
he, too, left one important question entirely to the Chief Justice's
ingenuity, as will be indicated shortly. Fortunately for the College its
opponents were ill prepared to take advantage of the vulnerable points
of its defense. For some unknown reason, Bartlett and Sullivan, who had
carried the day at Exeter, had now given place to William Wirt and John
Holmes. Of these the former had just been made Attorney-General of the
United States and had no time to give to the case--indeed he admitted
that "he had hardly thought of it till it was called on." As for Holmes,
he was a "kaleidoscopic politician" and barroom wit, best known to
contemporaries as "the noisy eulogist and reputed protégé of Jefferson."
A remarkable strategy that, which stood such a person up before John
Marshall to plead the right of state Legislatures to dictate the
fortunes of liberal institutions!
The arguments were concluded on Thursday, the 12th of March. The next
morning the Chief Justice announced that the Court had conferred, that
there were different opinions, that some of the judges had not arrived
at a conclusion, and that consequently the cause must be continued.
Webster, however, who was apt to be much in "the know" of such matters,
ventured to place the different judges thus: "The Chief and Washington,"
he wrote his former colleague Smith, "I have no doubt, are with us.
Duvall and Todd perhaps against us; the other three holding up--I cannot
much doubt but that Story will be with us in the end, and I think we
have much more than an even chance for one of the others."
The friends of the College set promptly to work to bring over the
wavering judges. To their dismay they learned that Chancellor James Kent
of New York, whose views were known to have great weight with Justices
Johnson and Livingston, had expressed himself as convinced by Chief
Justice Richardson's opinion that Dartmouth College was a public
corporation. Fortunately, however, a little ransacking of the records
brought to light an opinion which Kent and Livingston had both signed as
early as 1803, when they were members of the New York Council of
Revision, and which took the ground that a then pending measure in the
New York Legislature for altering the Charter of New York City violated
"due process of law." At the same time, Charles Marsh, a friend of both
Kent and Webster, brought to the attention of the former Webster's
argument before Marshall at Washington in March, 1818. Then came a
series of conferences at Albany in which Chancellor Kent, Justice
Johnson, President Brown of Dartmouth College, Governor Clinton, and
others participated. As a result, the Chancellor owned himself converted
to the idea that the College was a private institution.
The new term of court opened on Monday, February 1, 1819. William
Pinkney, who in vacation had accepted a retainer from the backers of
Woodward, that is, of the State, took his stand on the second day near
the Chief Justice, expecting to move for a reargument. Marshall,
"turning his blind eye" to the distinguished Marylander, announced that
the Court had reached a decision, plucked from his sleeve an eighteen
folio manuscript opinion, and began reading it. He held that the College
was a "private eleemosynary institution"; that its charter was the
outgrowth of a contract between the original donors and the Crown, that
the trustees represented the interest of the donors, and that the terms
of the Constitution were broad enough to cover and protect this
representative interest. The last was the only point on which he
confessed a real difficulty. The primary purpose of the constitutional
clause, he owned, was to protect "contracts the parties to which have a
vested beneficial interest" in them, whereas the trustees had no such
interest at stake. But, said he, the case is within the words of the
rule, and "must be within its operation likewise, unless there be
something in the literal construction" obviously at war with the spirit
of the Constitution, which was far from the fact. For, he continued, "it
requires no very critical examination of the human mind to enable us to
determine that one great inducement to these gifts is the conviction
felt by the giver that the disposition he makes of them is immutable.
All such gifts are made in the pleasing, perhaps delusive hope, that the
charity will flow forever in the channel which the givers have marked
out for it. If every man finds in his own bosom strong evidence of the
universality of this sentiment, there can be but little reason to
imagine that the framers of our Constitution were strangers to it, and
that, feeling the necessity and policy of giving permanence and security
to contracts" generally, they yet deemed it desirable to leave this sort
of contract subject to legislative interference. Such is Marshall's
answer to Jefferson's outburst against "the dead hand."
Characteristically, Marshall nowhere cites Fletcher vs. Peck in his
opinion, but he builds on the construction there made of the "obligation
of contracts" clause as clearly as do his associates, Story and
Washington, who cite it again and again in their concurring opinion.
Thus he concedes that the British Parliament, in consequence of its
unlimited power, might at any time before the Revolution have annulled
the charter of the College and so have disappointed the hopes of the
donors; but, he adds, "the perfidy of the transaction would have been
universally acknowledged." Later on, he further admits that at the time
of the Revolution the people of New Hampshire succeeded to "the
transcendent power of Parliament," as well as to that of the King, with
the result that a repeal of the charter before 1789 could have been
contested only under the State Constitution. "But the Constitution of
the United States," he continues, "has imposed this additional
limitation, that the Legislature of a State shall pass no act 'impairing
the obligation of contracts.'" In short, as in Fletcher vs. Peck, what
was originally a moral obligation is regarded as having been lifted by
the Constitution into the full status of a legal one, and this time
without any assistance from "the general principles of our free
institutions."
How is the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dartmouth
College vs. Woodward to be assessed today? Logically the basis of it was
repudiated by the Court itself within a decade, albeit the rule it lays
down remained unaffected. Historically it is equally without basis, for
the intention of the obligation of contracts clause, as the evidence
amply shows, was to protect private executory contracts, and especially
contracts of debt. ¹ In actual practice, on the other hand, the decision
produced one considerable benefit: in the words of a contemporary
critic, it put private institutions of learning and charity out of the
reach of "legislative despotism and party violence."
¹ Much of the evidence is readily traceable through the Index to Max
Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention.
But doubtless, the critic will urge, by the same sign this decision also
put profit-seeking corporations beyond wholesome legislative control.
But is this a fact? To begin with, such a criticism is clearly
misdirected. As we have just seen, the New Hampshire Superior Court
itself would have felt that Fletcher vs. Peck left it no option but to
declare the amending act void, had Dartmouth College been, say, a gas
company; and this was in all probability the universal view of bench and
bar in 1819. Whatever blame there is should therefore be awarded the
earlier decision. But, in the second place, there does not appear after
all to be so great measure of blame to be awarded. The opinion in
Dartmouth College vs. Woodward leaves it perfectly clear that
legislatures may reserve the right to alter or repeal at will the
charters they grant. If therefore alterations and repeals have not been
as frequent as public policy has demanded, whose fault is it?
Perhaps, however, it will be argued that the real mischief of the
decision has consisted in its effect upon the state Legislatures
themselves, the idea being that large business interests, when offered
the opportunity of obtaining irrepealable charters, have frequently
found it worth their while to assail frail legislative virtue with
irresistible temptation. The answer to this charge is a "confession in
avoidance"; the facts alleged are true enough but hardly to the point.
Yet even if they were, what is to be said of that other not uncommon
incident of legislative history, the legislative "strike," whereby
corporations not protected by irrepealable charters are blandly
confronted with the alternative of having their franchises mutilated or
of paying handsomely for their immunity? So the issue seems to resolve
itself into a question of taste regarding two species of legislative
"honesty." Does one prefer that species which, in the words of the late
Speaker Reed, manifests itself in "staying bought," or that species
which flowers in legislative blackmail? The truth of the matter is that
Marshall's decision has been condemned by ill-informed or
ill-intentioned critics for evils which are much more simply and much
more adequately explained by general human cupidity and by the power
inherent in capital. These are evils which have been experienced quite
as fully in other countries which never heard of the "obligation of
contracts" clause.
The decisions reached in Fletcher vs. Peck and Dartmouth College vs.
Woodward are important episodes in a significant phase of American
constitutional history. Partly on account of the lack of distinction
between legislative and judicial power and partly on account of the
influence of the notion of parliamentary sovereignty, legislative bodies
at the close of the eighteenth century were the sources of much
anonymous and corporate despotism. Even in England as well as in this
country the value, and indeed the possibility, of representative
institutions had been frankly challenged in the name of liberty. For the
United States the problem of making legislative power livable and
tolerable--a problem made the more acute by the multiplicity of
legislative bodies--was partly solved by the establishment of judicial
review. But this was only the first step: legislative power had still to
be defined and confined. Marshall's audacity in invoking generally
recognized moral principles against legislative sovereignty in his
interpretation of the "obligation of contracts" clause pointed the way
to the American judiciaries for the discharge of their task of defining
legislative power. The final result is to be seen today in the Supreme
Court's concept of the police power of a State as a power not of
arbitrary but of reasonable legislation.
While Marshall was performing this service in behalf of representative
government, he was also aiding the cause of nationalism by accustoming
certain types of property to look upon the National Government as their
natural champion against the power of the States. In this connection it
should also be recalled that Gibbons vs. Ogden and Brown vs. Maryland
had advanced the principle of the exclusiveness of Congress's power over
foreign and interstate commerce. Under the shelter of this
interpretation there developed, in the railroad and transportation
business of the country before the Civil War, a property interest almost
as extensive as that which supported the doctrine of State Rights. Nor
can it be well doubted that Marshall designed some such result or that
he aimed to prompt the reflection voiced by King of Massachusetts on the
floor of the Federal Convention. "He was filled with astonishment that,
if we were convinced that every man in America was secured in all his
rights, we should be ready to sacrifice this substantial good to the
phantom of state sovereignty."
Lastly, these decisions brought a certain theoretical support to the
Union. Marshall himself did not regard the Constitution as a compact
between the States; if a compact at all, it was a compact among
individuals, a social compact. But a great and increasing number of his
countrymen took the other view. How unsafe, then, it would have been
from the standpoint of one concerned for the integrity of the Union, to
distinguish public contracts from private on the ground that the former,
in the view of the Constitution, had less obligation!