Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/12

 4 § 1100. The power to pass laws on the subject of bankruptcies was not in the original draft of the constitution. The original article was committed to a committee together with the following proposition: "to establish uniform laws upon the subject of bankruptcies, and respecting the damages arising on the protest of foreign bills of exchange." The committee subsequently made a report in favour of incorporating the clause on the subject of bankruptcies into the constitution; and it was adopted by a vote of nine states against one. The brevity, with which this subject is treated by the Federalist, is quite remarkable. The only passage in that elaborate commentary, in which the subject is treated, is as follows: The power of establishing uniform laws of bankruptcy is so intimately connected with the regulation of commerce, and will prevent so many frauds, where the parties or their property may lie, or be removed into different states, that the expediency of it seems not likely to be drawn in question.

§ 1101. The subject, however, deserves a more exact consideration. Before the adoption of the constitution the states severally possessed the exclusive right, as matter belonging to their general sovereignty, to pass laws upon the subject of bankruptcy and insolvency. Without stopping at present to consider, what is the precise meaning of each of these terms, as contradistinguished from the other; it may be stated, that the general object of all bankrupt and insolvent laws is, on the one hand, to secure to creditors an