Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/507

 CH. VI.] sanction, independently of state legislation and state courts.

§ 485. Besides the debts due to foreigners, and the obligations to pay the same, the public debt of the United States was left utterly unprovided for; and the officers and soldiers of the revolution, who had achieved our independence, were, as we have had occasion to notice, suffered to languish in want, and their just demands evaded, or passed by with indifference. No efficient system to pay the public creditors was ever carried into operation, until the constitution was adopted; and, notwithstanding the increase of the public debt, occasioned by intermediate wars, it is now on the very eve of a total extinguishment.

§ 486. These evils, whatever might be their magnitude, did not create so universal a distress, or so much private discontent, as others of a more domestic nature, which were subversive of the first principles of justice. Independent of the unjustifiable preferences, which were fostered in favour of citizens of the state over those belonging to other states, which were not few nor slight, there were certain calamities inflicted by the common course of legislation in most of the states, which went to the prostration of all public faith and all private credit. Laws were constantly made by the state legislatures violating, with more or less degrees of aggravation, the sacredness of private contracts. Laws compelling the receipt of a depreciated