Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/302

 262 the public councils of the states, and the private intercourse of social life. They became more warm, not to say violent, as the contest became more close, and the exigency more appalling. They were inflamed by new causes, of which some were of a permanent, and some of a temporary character. The field of argument was wide; and experience had not, as yet, furnished the advocates on either side with such a variety of political tests, as were calculated to satisfy doubts, allay prejudices, or dissipate the fears and illusions of the imagination.

§ 286. In this state of things the embarrassments of the country in its financial concerns, the general pecuniary distress among the people from the exhausting operations of the war, the total prostration of commerce, and the languishing unthriftiness of agriculture, gave new impulses to the already marked political divisions in the legislative councils. Efforts were made, on one side, to relieve the pressure of the public calamities by a resort to the issue of paper money, to tender laws, and instalment and other laws, having for their object the postponement of the payment of private debts, and a diminution of the public taxes. On the other side, public as well as private creditors became alarmed from the increased dangers to property, and the increased facility of perpetrating frauds to the destruction of all private faith and credit. And they insisted strenuously upon the establishment of a government, and system of laws, which should preserve the public faith, and redeem the country from that ruin, which always follows upon the violation of the principles of justice, and the moral obligation of contracts. "At length," we are told, "two great parties were formed in