1. The words are general. The States can pass no law impairing contracts; that is, any contract. In the nature of things a law may impair a future contract, and therefore such contract is within the protection of the Constitution. The words being general, it is for the other side to show a limitation; and this, it is submitted, they have wholly failed to do, unless they shall have established the doctrine that the law itself is part of the contract. It may be added, that the particular expression of the Constitution is worth regarding. The thing prohibited is called a law, not an act. A law, in its general acceptation, is a rule prescribed for future conduct, not a legislative interference with existing rights. The framers of the Constitution would hardly have given the appellation of law to violent invasions of individual right, or individual property, by acts of legislative power. Although, doubtless, such acts fall within this prohibition, yet they are prohibited also by general principles, and by the constitutions of the States, and therefore further provision against such acts was not so necessary as against other mischiefs.
2. The most conclusive argument, perhaps, arises from the connection in which the clause stands. The words of the prohibition, so far as it applies to civil rights, or rights of property, are, that "no State shall coin money, emit bills of credit, make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in the payment of debts, or pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts." The prohibition of attainders, and ex post facto laws, refers entirely to criminal proceedings, and therefore should be considered as standing by itself; but the other parts of the prohibition are connected by the subject-matter, and ought, therefore, to be construed together. Taking the words thus together, according to their natural connection, how is it possible to give a more limited construction to the term "contracts," in the last branch of the sentence, than to the word "debts," in that immediately preceding? Can a State make any thing but gold and silver a tender in payment of future debts? This nobody pretends. But what ground is there for a distinction? No State shall make any thing but gold and silver a tender in the payment of debts, nor pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts. Now, by what reasoning is it made out that the debts here spoken of are any debts, either existing or future, but that the contracts spoken of are subsisting contracts only? Such a distinction seems to us wholly arbitrary. We see no ground for it. Suppose the article, where it uses the word debts, had used the word contracts. The sense would have been the same then that it now is; but the identity of terms would have made the nature of the distinction now contended for somewhat more obvious. Thus altered, the clause would read, that no State should make any thing but gold and silver a tender in discharge of contracts, nor pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts; yet the first of these expressions would have been held to apply to all contracts, and the last to subsisting contracts only. This shows the consequence of what is now contended for in a strong light. It is certain that the substitution of the word contracts for debts would not alter the sense; and an argument that could not be sustained, if such substitution were made, cannot be sustained now. We maintain, therefore, that, if tender laws may not be made for future debts, neither can bankrupt laws be made for future contracts. All the arguments used here may be applied with equal force to tender laws for future debts. It may be said, for instance, that, when it speaks of debts, the Constitution means existing debts, and not mere possibilities of future debt; that the object was to preserve vested rights; and that if a man, after a tender law had passed, had contracted a debt, the manner in which that tender law authorized that debt to be discharged became part of the contract, and that the whole debt, or whole obligation, was thus qualified by the pre-existing law, and was no more than a contract to deliver so much paper money, or whatever other article might be made a tender, as the original bargain expressed. Arguments of this sort will not be found wanting in favor of tender laws, if the court yield to similar arguments in favor of bankrupt laws.
These several prohibitions of the Constitution stand in the same paragraph; they have the same purpose, and were introduced for the same object; they are expressed in words of similar import, in grammar, and in sense; they are subject to the same construction, and we think no reason has yet been given for imposing an important restriction on one part of them, which does not equally show that the same restriction might be imposed also on the other part.
We have already endeavored to maintain, that one great political object intended by the Constitution would be defeated, if this construction were allowed to prevail. As an object of political regulation, it was not important to prevent the States from passing bankrupt laws applicable to present debts, while the power was left to them in regard to future debts; nor was it at all important, in a political point of view, to prohibit tender laws as to future debts, while it was yet left to the States to pass laws for the discharge of such debts, which, after all, are little different in principle from tender laws. Look at the law before the court in this view. It provides, that, if the debtor will surrender, offer, or tender to trustees, for the benefit of his creditors, all his estate and effects, he shall be discharged from all his debts. If it had authorized a tender of any thing but money to any one creditor, though it were of a value equal to the debt, and thereupon provided for a discharge, it would have been clearly invalid. Yet it is maintained to be good, merely because it is made for all creditors, and seeks a discharge from all debts; although the thing tendered may not be equivalent to a shilling in the pound of those debts. This shows, again, very clearly, how the Constitution has failed of its purpose, if, having in terms prohibited all tender laws, and taken so much pains to establish a uniform medium of payment, it has yet left the States the power of discharging debts, as they may see fit, without any payment at all.
To recapitulate what has been said, we maintain, first, that the Constitution, by its grants to Congress and its prohibitions on the States, has sought to establish one uniform standard of value, or medium of payment. Second, that, by like means, it has endeavored to provide for one uniform mode of discharging debts, when they are to be discharged without payment. Third, that these objects are connected, and that the first loses much of its importance, if the last, also, be not accomplished. Fourth, that, reading the grant to Congress and the prohibition on the States together, the inference is strong that the Constitution intended to confer an exclusive power to pass bankrupt laws on Congress. Fifth, that the prohibition in the tenth section reaches to all contracts, existing or future, in the same way that the other prohibition in the same section extends to all debts existing or future. Sixthly, that, upon any other construction, one great political object of the Constitution will fail of its accomplishment.
[Footnote 1: Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. Rep. 122.]
THE MURDER OF CAPTAIN JOSEPH WHITE.
AN ARGUMENT ON THE TRIAL OF JOHN FRANCIS KNAPP, FOR THE MURDER OF JOSEPH WHITE, OF SALEM, IN ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS, ON THE NIGHT OF THE 6TH OF APRIL, 1830.
[The following argument was addressed to the jury at a trial for a remarkable murder. A more extraordinary case never occurred in this country, nor is it equalled in strange interest by any trial in the French Causes Célèbres or the English State Trials. Deep sensation and intense curiosity were excited through the whole country, at the time of the occurrence of the event, not only by the atrocity of the crime, but by the position of the victim, and the romantic incidents in the detection and fate of the assassin and his accomplices.
The following outline of the facts will assist the reader to understand the bearings of the argument.