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.