Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/263

 CH. XXXIV.] had been carried to such an excess by the state legislature, as to break in upon all the ordinary intercourse of society, and to destroy all private confidence. It was a great object to prevent for the future such mischievous measures. (6.) That the clause, in its terms, purports to be perpetual; and the principle, to be of any value, must be perpetual. It is expressed in terms sufficiently broad to operate in all future times; and the just inference, therefore, is, that it was so intended. But if the other interpretation of it be adopted, the clause will become of little effect; and the constitution will have imposed a restriction, in language indicating perpetuity, which every state in the Union may elude at pleasure. The obligation of contracts in force at any given time is but of short duration; and if the prohibition be of retrospective laws only, a very short lapse of time will remove every subject, upon which state laws are forbidden to operate, and make this provision of the constitution so far useless. Instead of introducing a great principle, prohibiting all laws of this noxious character, the constitution will suspend their operation only for a moment, or except pre-existing cases from it. The nature of the provision is thus essentially changed. Instead of being a prohibition to pass laws impairing the obligation of contracts, it is only a prohibition to pass retrospective laws. (7.) That there is the less reason for adopting such a construction, since the state laws, which produced the mischief, were prospective, as well as retrospective.

§ 1384. The question is now understood to be finally at rest; and state insolvent laws, discharging the obligation of future contracts, are to be deemed