Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/246

 238 phraseology employed, the prohibition of state tender laws will admit of no construction confining it to state laws, which have a retrospective operation. Accordingly, it has been uniformly held, that the prohibition applies to all future laws on the subject of tender; and therefore no state legislature can provide, that future pecuniary contracts may be discharged by any thing, but gold and silver coin.

§ 1367. The next prohibition is, that no state shall "pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts." The two former require no commentary, beyond what has been already offered, under a similar prohibitory clause applied to the government of the United States. The same policy and principles apply to each. It would have been utterly useless, if not absurd, to deny a power to the Union, which might at the same time be applied by the states, to purposes equally mischievous, and tyrannical; and which might, when applied by the states, be for the very purpose of subverting the Union. Before the constitution of the United States was adopted, every state, unless prohibited by its own constitution, might pass a bill of attainder, or ex post facto law, as a general result of its sovereign legislative power. And such a prohibition would not be implied from a constitutional provision, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments shall be separate, and distinct; that crimes shall be tried in the county, where they are committed; or that the trial by jury shall remain