Part 10 (1/2)

But this pretence, it will be seen, utterly discards the idea that contracts have any _natural_ obligation. It implies that contracts have no obligation, except the laws that are made for enforcing them. But if contracts have no _natural_ obligation, they have no obligation at all, _that ought to be enforced_; and the State is a mere usurper, tyrant, and robber, in pa.s.sing any law to enforce them.

Plainly a State cannot rightfully enforce any contracts at all, unless they have a _natural_ obligation.

3. A third pretence, by which the courts attempt to evade this provision of the const.i.tution, is this: They say that ”the law is a part of the contract” itself; and therefore cannot impair its obligation.

By this they mean that, if a law is standing upon the statute book, prescribing what obligation certain contracts shall, or shall not, have, it must then be presumed that, whenever such a contract is made, the parties intended to make it according to that law; and really to make the law a part of their contract; _although they themselves say nothing of the kind_.

This pretence, that the law is a part of the contract, is a mere trick to cheat people out of their natural right to make their own contracts; and to compel them to make only such contracts as the lawmakers choose to permit them to make.

To say that it must be presumed that the parties intended to make their contracts according to such laws as may be prescribed to them--or, what is the same thing, to make the laws a part of their contracts--is equivalent to saying that the parties must be presumed to have given up all their natural right to make their own contracts; to have acknowledged themselves imbeciles, incompetent to make reasonable contracts, and to have authorized the lawmakers to make their contracts for them; for if the lawmakers can make any part of a man's contract, and presume his consent to it, they can make a whole one, and presume his consent to it.

If the lawmakers can make any part of men's contracts, they can make the whole of them; and can, therefore, buy and sell, borrow and lend, give and receive men's property of all kinds, according to their (the lawmakers') own will, pleasure, or discretion; without the consent of the real owners of the property, and even without their knowledge, until it is too late. In short, they may take any man's property, and give it, or sell it, to whom they please, and on such conditions, and at such prices, as they please; without any regard to the rights of the owner.

They may, in fact, at their pleasure, strip any, or every, man of his property, and bestow it upon whom they will; and then justify the act upon the presumption that the owner consented to have his property thus taken from him and given to others.

This absurd, contemptible, and detestable trick has had a long lease of life, and has been used as a cover for some of the greatest of crimes.

By means of it, the marriage contract has been perverted into a contract, on the part of the woman, to make herself a legal non-ent.i.ty, or _non compos mentis_; to give up, to her husband, all her personal property, and the control of all her real estate; and to part with her natural, inherent, inalienable right, as a human being, to direct her own labor, control her own earnings, make her own contracts, and provide for the subsistence of herself and her children.

There would be just as much reason in saying that the lawmakers have a right to make the entire marriage contract; to marry any man and woman against their will; dispose of all their personal and property rights; declare them imbeciles, incapable of making a reasonable marriage contract; then presume the consent of both the parties; and finally treat them as criminals, and their children as outcasts, if they presume to make any contract of their own.

This same trick, of holding that the law is a part of the contract, has been made to protect the private property of stockholders from liability for the debts of the corporations, of which they were members; and to protect the private property of special partners, so-called, or limited partners, from liability for partners.h.i.+p debts.

This same trick has been employed to justify insolvent and bankrupt laws, so-called, whereby a first creditor's right to a first mortgage on the property of his debtor, has been taken from him, and he has been compelled to take his chances with as many subsequent creditors as the debtor may succeed in becoming indebted to

All these absurdities and atrocities have been practiced by the lawmakers of the States, and sustained by the courts, under the pretence that they (the courts) did not know what the natural ”obligation of contracts” was; or that, if they did know what it was, the const.i.tution of the United States imposed no restraint upon its unlimited violation by the State lawmakers.

SECTION XX.

But, not content with having always sanctioned the unlimited power of the _State_ lawmakers to abolish all men's natural right to make their own contracts, the Supreme Court of the United States has, within the last twenty years, taken pains to a.s.sert that congress also has the arbitrary power to abolish the same right.

1. It has a.s.serted the arbitrary power of congress to abolish all men's right to make their own contracts, by a.s.serting its power _to alter the meaning of all contracts, after they are made_, so as to make them widely, or wholly, different from what the parties had made them.

Thus the court has said that, after a man has made a contract to pay a certain number of dollars, at a future time,--_meaning such dollars as were current at the time the contract was made_,--congress has power to coin a dollar of less value than the one agreed on, and authorize the debtor to pay his debt with a dollar of less value than the one he had promised.

To cover up this infamous crime, the court a.s.serts, over and over again,--what no one denies,--that congress has power (const.i.tutionally speaking) to alter, at pleasure, the value of its coins. But it then a.s.serts that congress has this additional, and wholly different, power, to wit, the power to declare that this alteration in the value of the coins _shall work a corresponding change in all existing contracts for the payment of money_.

In reality they say that a contract to pay money is not a contract to pay any particular amount, or value, of such money as was known and understood by the parties at the time the contract was made, but _only such, and so much, as congress shall afterwards choose to call by that name, when the debt shall become due_.

They a.s.sert that, by simply retaining the name, while altering the thing,--_or by simply giving an old name to a new thing_,--congress has power to utterly abolish the contract which the parties themselves entered into, and subst.i.tute for it any such new and different one, as they (congress) may choose to subst.i.tute.

Here are their own words:

_The contract obligation ... was not a duty to pay gold or silver, or the kind of money recognized by law at the time when the contract was made, nor was it a duty to pay money of equal intrinsic value in the market.... But the obligation of a contract to pay money is to pay that which the law shall recognize as money when the payment is to be made.--Legal Tender Cases, 12 Wallace 548._

This is saying that the obligation of a contract to pay money is not an obligation to pay what both the law and the parties recognize as money, _at the time when the contract is made_, but only such subst.i.tute as congress shall afterwards prescribe, ”_when the payment is to be made_.”

This opinion was given by a majority of the court in the year 1870.

In another opinion the court says: