Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/699

 CH. XLII.]

§ 1826. first clause of the sixth article of the constitution is: "All debts contracted, and engagements entered into before the adoption of this constitution, shall be as valid against the United States, under this constitution, as under the confederation."

§ 1827. This can be considered in no other light, than as a declaratory proposition, resulting from the law of nations, and the moral obligations of society. Nothing is more clear upon reason or general law, than the doctrine, that revolutions in government have, or rather ought to have, no effect whatsoever upon private rights, and contracts, or upon the public obligations of nations. It results from the first principles of moral duty, and responsibility, deducible from the law of nature, and applied to the intercourse and social relations of nations. A change in the political form of a society ought to have no power to produce a dissolution of any of its moral obligations.

§ 1828. This declaration was probably inserted in the constitution,, not only as a solemn recognition of the obligations of the government resulting from