Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/549

 CH. XXXVIII.] property, a just demand upon the king, he may petition him in his court of chancery (by what is called a petition of right) where the chancellor will administer right, theoretically as a matter of grace, and not upon compulsion; but in fact, as a matter of constitutional duty. No such judicial proceeding is recognized, as existing in any state of this Union, as matter of constitutional right, to enforce any claim, or debt against a state. In the few cases, in which it exists, it is matter of legislative enactment. Congress have never yet acted upon the subject, so as to give judicial redress for any non-fulfilment of contracts by the national government. Cases of the most cruel hardship, and intolerable delay have already occurred, in which meritorious creditors have been reduced to grievous suffering, and sometimes to absolute ruin, by the tardiness of a justice, which has been yielded only after the humble supplications of many years before the legislature. One can scarcely refrain from uniting in the suggestion of a learned commentator, that in this regard the constitutions, both of the national and state governments, stand in need of some reform, to quicken the legislative action in the administration of justice; and, that