laws to be applied in presenti.  Now, it is not contended that such laws are unjust, and ought not to be passed by any legislature.  It is not said that they are unwise or impolitic.  On the contrary, we know the general practice to be, that, when bankrupt laws are established, they make no distinction between present and future debts.  While all agree that special acts, made for individual cases, are unjust, all admit that a general law, made for all cases, may be both just and politic.  The question, then, which meets us on the threshold is this:  If the Constitution meant to leave the States the power of establishing systems of bankruptcy to act upon future debts, what great or important object of a political nature is answered by denying the power of making such systems applicable to existing debts?

The argument used in Sturges v.  Crowninshield was, at least, a plausible and consistent argument.  It maintained that the prohibition of the Constitution was levelled only against interferences in individual cases, and did not apply to general laws, whether those laws were retrospective or prospective in their operation.  But the court rejected that conclusion.  It decided that the Constitution was intended to apply to general laws or systems of bankruptcy; that an act providing that all debtors might be discharged from all creditors, upon certain conditions, was of no more validity than an act providing that a particular debtor, A, should be discharged on the same conditions from his particular creditor, B.

It being thus decided that general laws are within the prohibition of the Constitution, it is for the plaintiff in error now to show on what ground, consistent with the general objects of the Constitution, he can establish a distinction which can give effect to those general laws in their application to future debts, while it denies them effect in their application to subsisting debts.  The words are, that “no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts.”  The general operation of all such laws is to impair that obligation; that is, to discharge the obligation without fulfilling it.  This is admitted; and the only ground taken for the distinction to stand on is, that, when the law was in existence at the time of the making of the contract, the parties must be supposed to have reference to it, or, as it is usually expressed, the law is made a part of the contract.  Before considering what foundation there is for this argument, it may be well to inquire what is that obligation of contracts of which the Constitution speaks, and whence is it derived.

The definition given by the court in Sturges v.  Crowninshield is sufficient for our present purpose.  “A contract,” say the court, “is an agreement to do some particular thing; the law binds the party to perform this agreement, and this is the obligation of the contract.”

It is indeed probable that the Constitution used the words in a somewhat more popular sense.  We speak, for example, familiarly of a usurious contract, and yet we say, speaking technically, that a usurious agreement is no contract.