Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/17

 CH. XVI.] § 1104. In the next place, the power is important in regard to foreign countries, and to our commercial credits and intercourse with them. Unless the general government were invested with authority to pass suitable laws, which should give reciprocity and equality in cases of bankruptcies here, there would be danger, that the state legislation might, by undue domestic preferences and favours, compel foreign countries to retaliate; and instead of allowing creditors in the United States to partake an equality of benefits in cases of bankruptcies, to postpone them to all others. The existence of the power is, therefore, eminently useful; first, as a check upon undue state legislation; and secondly, as a means of redressing any grievances sustained by foreigners in commercial transactions.

§ 1105. It cannot but be matter of regret, that a power so salutary should have hitherto remained (as has been already intimated) a mere dead letter. It is extraordinary, that a commercial nation, spreading its enterprise through the whole world, and possessing such an infinitely varied, internal trade, reaching almost to every cottage in the most distant states, should voluntarily surrender up a system, which has elsewhere enjoyed such general favour, as the best security of creditors against fraud, and the best protection of debtors against oppression. 2