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situation; and the principle obtained an early admission into the various schemes of government which were submitted to the convention. In framing an instrument, which was intended to be perpetual, the presumption is strong that every important principle introduced into it is intended to be perpetual also; that a principle expressed in terms to operate in all future time, is intended so to operate. But if the construction, for which the plaintiff's counsel contend, be the true one, the constitution will have imposed a restriction in language, indicating perpetuity, which every State in the Union may elude at pleasure. The obligation of contracts in force, at any given time, is but of short duration; and, if the inhibition be of retrospective laws only, a very short lapse of time will remove every subject on which the act is forbidden to operate, and make this provision of the constitution so far useless. Instead of introducing a great principle, prohibiting all laws of this obnoxious character, the constitution will only suspend their operation for a moment, or except from it preëxisting cases. The object would scarcely seem to be of sufficient importance to have found a place in that instrument.

This construction would change the character of the provision,

and convert an inhibition to pass laws impairing the obli * 356]gation of contracts into an inhibition, to pass * retrospective laws. Had this been the intention of the convention, is it not reasonable to believe that it would have been so expressed? Had the intention been to confine the restriction to laws which were retrospective in their operation, language could have been found, and would have been used, to convey this idea. The very word would have occurred to the framers of the instrument, and we should have probably found it in the clause. Instead of the general prohibition to pass any "law impairing the obligation of contracts," the prohibition would have been to the passage of any retrospective law. Or, if the intention had been not to embrace all retrospective laws, but those only which related to contracts, still, the word would have been introduced, and the state legislatures would have been forbidden "to pass any retrospective law impairing the obligation of contracts," or "to pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts previously made." Words which directly and plainly express the cardinal intent, always present themselves to those who are preparing an important instrument, and will always be used by them. Undoubtedly there is an imperfection in human language, which often exposes the same sentence to different constructions. But it is rare, indeed, for a person of clear and distinct perceptions, intending to convey one principal idea, so to express himself as to leave any

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doubt respecting that idea. It may be uncertain whether his words. comprehend other things not immediately in his mind; but it can seldom be uncertain whether he intends the particular thing to which his mind is specially directed. If the mind of the convention, in framing this prohibition, had been directed, not generally to the operation of laws upon the obligation of contracts, but particularly to their retrospective operation, it is scarcely conceivable that some word would not have been used indicating this idea. In instruments prepared on great consideration, general terms, comprehending a whole subject, are seldom employed to designate a particular, we might say, a minute portion of that subject. The general language of the clause is such as might be suggested by a general intent to prohibit state legislation on the subject to which that language is applied, the obligation of contracts; not such as would be suggested by a particular intent to prohibit retrospective legislation.

[ *357]

It is also worthy of consideration, that those laws which had effected all that mischief the constitution intended to prevent, were prospective as well as retrospective, in their operation. They embraced future contracts, as well as those previously formed. There is the less reason for imputing to the convention an intention, not manifested by their language, to confine a restriction intended to guard against the recurrence of those mischiefs, to retrospective legislation. For these reasons, we are of opinion that, on this point, the district court of Louisiana has decided rightly.

Judgment having been entered in favor of the validity of a certificate of discharge under the state laws in those cases, argued in connection with Ogden v. Saunders, where the contract was made. between citizens of the State under whose law the discharge was obtained, and in whose courts the certificate was pleaded, the cause was further argued by the same counsel, upon the points reserved, as to the effect of such a discharge in respect to a contract made with a citizen of another State, and where the certificate was pleaded in the courts of another State, or of the United States.

JOHNSON, J. I am instructed by the majority of the [358 ] court finally to dispose of this cause. The present majority is not the same which determined the general question on the constitutionality of state insolvent laws, with reference to the violation of the obligation of contracts. I now stand united with the minority on the former question, and, therefore, feel it due to myself and the community to maintain my consistency.

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The question now to be considered is, whether a discharge of a debtor under a state insolvent law, would be valid against a creditor or citizen of another State, who has never voluntarily subjected himself to the state laws, otherwise than by the origin of his contract.

As between its own citizens, whatever be the origin of the contract, there is now no question to be made on the effect of such a discharge; nor is it to be questioned, that a discharge not valid under the constitution in the courts of the United States, is equally invalid in the state courts. The question to be considered goes to the invalidity of the discharge altogether, and, therefore, steers clear of that provision in the constitution which purports to give validity in every State to the records, judicial proceedings, and so forth, of each State.

The question now to be considered, was anticipated in [* 359 ] *the case of Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 W. 122, when the court, in the close of the opinion delivered, declared that it means to confine its views to the case then under consideration, and not to commit itself as to those in which the interests and rights of a citizen of another State are implicated.

The question is one partly international, partly constitutional. My opinion on the subject is briefly this: that the provision in the constitution which gives the power to the general government to establish tribunals of its own in every State, in order that the citizens of other States or sovereignties might therein prosecute their rights under the jurisdiction of the United States, had for its object an harmonious distribution of justice throughout the Union; to confine the States, in the exercise of their judicial sovereignty, to cases between their own citizens; to prevent, in fact, the exercise of that very power over the rights of citizens of other States, which the origin of the contract might be supposed to give to each State; and thus, to obviate that conflictus legum, which has employed the pens of Huberus and various others, and which any one who studies the subject will plainly perceive it is infinitely more easy to prevent than to adjust.

These conflicts of power and right necessarily arise only after contracts are entered into. Contracts, then, become the appropriate subjects of judicial cognizance; and if the just claims which they give rise to, are violated by arbitrary laws, or if the course of distributive justice be turned aside, or obstructed by legislative interference, it becomes a subject of jealousy, irritation, and national complaint or retaliation.

It is not unimportant to observe, that the constitution was adopted at the very period when the courts of Great Britain were engaged in adjusting the conflicts of right which arose upon their own bankrupt law, among the subjects of that crown in the several dominions of

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Scotland, Ireland, and the West Indies. The first case we have on the effect of foreign discharges, that of Ballantine v. Golding, 1 Cooke's Bank. Law, 487, occurred in 1783, and the law could hardly be held settled before the case of Hunter v. Potts, 4 Term Rep. 182, which was decided in 1791.

Any one who will take the trouble to investigate the [* 360] subject, will, I think, be satisfied, that although the British courts profess to decide upon a principle of universal law, when adjudicating upon the effect of a foreign discharge, neither the passage in Vattel, to which they constantly refer, nor the practice and doctrines of other nations, will sustain them in the principle to the extent in which they assert it. It was all-important to a great commercial nation, the creditors of all the rest of the world, to maintain the doctrine as one of universal obligation, that the assignment of the bankrupt's effects, under a law of the country of the contract, should carry the interest in his debts, wherever his debtor may reside; and that no foreign discharge of his debtor should operate against debts contracted with the bankrupt in his own country. But I think it perfectly clear that, in the United States, a different doctrine has been established; and, since the power to discharge the bankrupt is asserted on the same principle with the power to assign his debts, that the departure from it in the one instance, carries with it a negation of the principle altogether.

It is vain to deny that it is now the established doctrine in England, that the discharge of a bankrupt shall be effectual against contracts of the State that give the discharge, whatsoever be the allegiance or country of the creditor. But I think it equally clear, that this is a rule peculiar to her jurisprudence, and that reciprocity is the general rule of other countries; that the effect given to such discharge is so much a matter of comity, that the States of the European continent, in all cases, reserve the right of deciding whether reciprocity will not operate injuriously upon their own citizens.

Huberus, in his third axiom on this subject, puts the effect of such laws upon the ground of courtesy, and recognizes the reservation that I have mentioned; other writers do the same.

I will now examine the American decisions on this subject; and, first, in direct hostility with the received doctrines of the British courts, it has been solemnly adjudged in this court, and, I believe, in every state court of the Union, that, notwithstanding the laws of bankruptcy in England, a creditor of the bankrupt [* 361 ] may levy an attachment on a debt due the bankrupt in this country, and appropriate the proceeds to his own debt.

In the case of Harrison v. Sterry, 5 C. 298, 302, a case decided in

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this court, in 1809, upon full argument, and great deliberation, and in which all the English cases were quoted, it is expressly adjudged, "that in the case of a contract made with foreigners in a foreign country, the bankrupt laws of the foreign country are incapable of operating a legal transfer of property in the United States," and judgment was given in favor of the attaching creditors, against the claim of the foreign assignees.

In that case, also, another important doctrine is established in hostility with the British doctrine. For the United States had interposed a claim against the English assignees, in order to obtain satisfaction from the proceeds of the bankrupt's effects in this country, for a debt contracted in Great Britain. And this court decreed, accordingly, expressly restricting the power of the country of the contract to its concoction and exposition.

The language of the court is: "The law of the place where a contract is made, is, generally speaking, the law of the contract; that is, it is the law by which the contract is expounded. But the right of priority forms no part of the contract itself. It is extrinsic, and is rather a personal privilege, dependent on the laws of the place where the property lies, and where the court sits which decides the cause."

And, accordingly, the law of the United States was sustained, which gave the debts due the bankrupt here, to satisfy a debt contracted in England, to the prejudice of the law of England, which gave the same debt to the assignees of the bankrupt.

It cannot be necessary to go further than this case to establish that, so far as relates to the foreign creditor, this country does not recognize the English doctrine, that the bankrupt law of the country of the contract is paramount in disposing of the rights of the bankrupt.

The United States pass a law which asserts the right to [* 362 ] * appropriate a debt due a foreign bankrupt, to satisfying a debt due itself, and incurred by that bankrupt in his own country. The assignees of that bankrupt question this right, and claim the debt as legally vested in them by the law of the country of the contract, and maintain that the debt due the United States, being contracted in Great Britain, was subject to the laws of Great Britain, and therefore entitled only to share in common with other creditors in the proceeds of the bankrupt's effects; that the debt so appropriated by the law of the United States to its exclusive benefit was, as to all the bankrupt's contracts, or certainly as to all English contracts, vested in the assignees, on international principles, principles which gave effect to the English bankrupt laws, so vesting that debt, paramount to the laws of other countries.