Page:The Supreme Court in United States History vol 1.djvu/93

Rh Justice Jay, Judge Gushing, and District Judge Henry Marchant, sitting in the Circuit Court for the- Dis- trict of Rhode Island, held a law of that State to be unconstitutional as impairing the obligation of contract, in the case of Alexander Champion and Thomas Dickason V. Silas Casey. The statute involved was an Act of the Rhode Island General Assembly passed in February, 1791, in response to a petition of a debtor for an extension of three years' time in which to settle his accounts with his creditors and for an exemption from all arrests and attachments for such term of three years. The decision was as follows: "The Court also determined in the case of Champion and Dickason against Silas Casey that the Legislature of a State have no right to make a law to exempt an individual from arrests and his estate from attachments for his private debts, for any term of time, it being clearly a law impairing the obligation of con- tracts, and therefore contrary to the Constitution of the United States.** Another newspaper stated that : "The defendant's counsel pleaded a resolution of the State in bar of the action, by which he was allowed three years to pay his debts and during which he was to be free from arrests on that account. The Judges were unanimously of opinion that, as by the Consti- tution of the United States, the individual States are prohibited from making laws which shall impair the obligation of contracts, and as the resolution in ques- tion, if operative, would impair the obligation of the contract in question, therefore it could not be admitted to bar the action." Though this decision was given