application to the court above for a new trial a law was passed, in 1825, to ratify and establish executions thus defectively executed or returned. It was objected that the act was unconstitutional, because it impaired the obligation of contracts; but it was said that, between the parties, there never was any contract relative to the land; that the levy of the execution was altogether in invitum, and that the objection pointed at an object which had no existence; and the statute was held valid on the ground that, although retrospective, it was a just and reasonable law.*

Another case has presented itself, in the same State, in relation to an act, passed in 1826, declaring that no levy of an execution theretofore made should be

*The court said, "In Goshen vs. Stonington, 4 Conn. Rep. 209, it was adjudged by this court that a retrospective law impairing vested rights, if it be not clearly unjust, is entitled to obedience; and that to disregard an act of the legislature, unless it be inequitable, oppressive, and in violation of the social compact, is not within the confines of judicial authority. I discern nothing of this character in the law under consideration. It is the ordinary exercise of legislative authority, in similar cases sometimes requisite to prevent great injustice and public inconvenience. In the case before us, the error arose from slight and unobserved alterations at the late revision of the law relative to the levy of executions. The wide-spread mischief to officers who had faithfully performed their duty according to their best knowledge, and the rights of numerous creditors whose debts were in jeopardy, furnished strong political and equitable reasons for the interposition of the legislature. On the other hand, to the mistaken levy of the execution the debtors had no reasonable objection; and creditors and purchasers, always acting with full information derived from the records of land titles, could not justly complain that they were not permitted to wrench from those who had levied their executions defectively the property to which they had, at least, an equitable title. The real question to be determined is merely this: Whether every retrospective law acting on vested rights is invalid. If it is not, there are few cases the equity of which more imperiously demands legislative interposition than those within the purview of the late law." Mather vs. Chapman, 6 Conn. Rep. 58; S. P. Norton vs. Pettibone, 7 Conn. 319; and Booth vs. Booth, 7 Conn. 351.

deemed void by reason of defects which, in the then state of the laws, were fatal. In a case where a levy had been made, an action brought by the execution creditor, trial had, and the levy held bad at the circuit before the confirmatory act passed, the Supreme Court held that the act was valid and that it made the levy good, that though retrospective, it was valid because just.*

We have thus terminated our consideration of this important clause of the Constitution. Its value has certainly been very great; but if we observe its practical operation in connection with that other fundamental guarantee of our rights, that private property shall not be taken without compensation, some deductions will perhaps have to be made from the commendations

* Hosmer, C. J., said, "Every act of the legislature intrinsically implies an opinion that the legislative body had a right to enact it. And the judiciary will discover sufficient promptitude if it determine a law to be invalid that operates by retrospection unjustly on person or property. This principle steers a correct medium, admitting the sovereignty of the legislature to do justice by an act unquestioned by the court of law, while it equally repels the supposed uncontrollable omnipotence of the same body to require the observance of an unjust law in subversion of fundamental rights and in opposition to the social compact. The question is not free from difficulty; but unless the doctrine sanctioned by the court be embraced, this extreme would be resorted to, that every retrospective law, however just or wise, affecting the property of an individual, must be considered as of no validity. And thus, in cases the most equitable and salutary, the judiciary must deny the legislative right to pass a law oppressive to no one and promotive of entire justice, and this upon the authority of general principles. I am not speculatist enough to yield my sanction to this course of proceeding. Beach vs. Walker, 6 Conn. 198.

"Under the power to maintain an army and navy, Congress may authorize infants to make a valid contract of enlistment; and an indentured infant, bound out by the managers of an alms-house as an apprentice, may enlist with the consent of the master, even although the consent of the manager is not obtained." Commonwealth vs. Murray, 4 Binn. 487; Commonwealth vs. Barker, 5 Binn. 423.

which we bestow on our system of constitutional law. In the one case, by a very rigid and technical interpretation of the word to take, and in the other by a most subtle and refined distinction between the contract and its remedy, it is difficult to deny that the protection intended to be given by both these provisions: has been seriously diminished.

In truth, the very protection sought to be afforded to private rights by our system of constitutional limitations in some sense diminishes their security; the interests that elsewhere are guarded by a general sense of the importance of refraining from all interference with individual rights, here seek the protection of precise texts of written law. It is not a protection of principle, so much as of authority; and the exercise of authority always, and eminently with us, excites jealousy and provokes resistance. But this aspect of the case opens a wide field for discussion, involving the peculiar character of our complex system of government, and the wants and necessities of a new country.

Vested Rights.*-Having thus surveyed the great field of constitutional law, and considered the operation and effect of the most prominent clauses in the fundamental law of the Federal and State governments, devised to operate as checks on legislative

In a case in

This phrase is one of most frequent occurrence. Maine, it was said, "The act is unconstitutional and cannot be carried into effect, because such operation would impair and destroy vested rights, and deprive the owners of real estate and of their titles thereto, by changing the principles and the nature of those facts by means of which those titles had existed and been preserved to them in safety." Proprietors Ken Purchase 28. Laboree, 2 Greenleaf, 295.

"It cannot be denied that the legislature possesses the power to take away by statute what was given by statute, except vested rights." The People vs. Livingston, per Savage, C. J., 6 Wend., 531.

power, and to act as guarantees of private property, we are better prepared, before taking final leave of our subject, to approach this branch of it in detail, and to form some general conclusions as to the rules by which and the extent to which private rights are secured under our form of government from gov ernmental invasion-in other words, to what extent vested rights are protected. This subject, i. e. the protection of vested rights, as they are called, has been repeatedly referred to in the progress of this work,* and the difficulty of laying down any precise rule in regard to them pointed out. Its importance, too, has

* Ante, pp. 177 and 193.

+ In England, as a matter of practice, vested rights are very sedulously protected; as a matter of theory, their doctrine of Parliamentary suprem acy leaves little room for the judicial discussion of them. The most promi nent case, perhaps, of Parliamentary examination of the question, occurs in the great debate on Fox's East India Bill. Mr. Burke said,—

"The rights of men, that is to say, the natural rights of mankind, are indeed sacred things; and if any public measure is proved mischievously to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it. If these natural rights are further affirmed and declared by express covenants; if they are clearly defined and secured against chicane, against power and authority, by written instruments and positive engagements, they are in a still better condition: they partake not only of the sanctity of the object so secured, but of that solemn public faith itself which secures an object of such importance.

"Indeed, this formal recognition by the sovereign power, of an original right in the subject, can never be subverted but by rooting up the radical principles of government, and even of society itself. The charters which we call by distinction great, are public instruments of this nature: I mean the charters of King John and King Henry the Third. The things secured by these instruments may, without any deceitful ambiguity, be very fitly called the chartered rights of men.

"These charters have made the very name of a charter dear to the heart of every Englishman. But, Sir, there may be, and there are, charters not only different in nature, but formed on principles the very reverse of those of the great charter. Of this kind is the charter of the East India Company. Magna charta is a charter to restrain power, and to destroy monop oly. The East India charter is a charter to establish monopoly and to create power. Political power and commercial monopoly are not the rights

Indeed, it is

been already repeatedly insisted on. manifest that in both the framework and the daily operation of our government, this is the great practical object sought to be obtained. Some governments may chiefly seek to guard against the turbulence of the poorer classes; some to repress the oligarchical insolence of a privileged class; some to prevent the union of the powers of the Church and of the State; some to check the authority of the sovereign. These points were certainly not overlooked by the founders of our government, the heroes and leaders of a popular revolution; but it will hardly be denied that with us as a practical question, the legislative power is the most formidable, nor that our system chiefly aims to guard the citizen against the legislature, to protect him against the power of a majority taking the shape of unjust law. And it is to be observed, also, that the unjust action of government with us is most likely to take the shape of attacks upon rights of property. All government, indeed, resolves itself into the protection of life, liberty, and property. Life and liberty in our fortunate condition are, however, little likely to be injuriously affected by the action of the body politic. Property is very differently situated. It is therefore of the highest moment, if possible, to obtain a clear idea as to the nature and extent of the protections which guard our rights of property

of men; and the rights of them derived from charters, it is fallacious and sophistical to call 'the chartered rights of men.'

"These chartered rights (to speak of such charters and of their effects in terms of the greatest possible moderation) do at least suspend the natural rights of mankind at large, and in their very frame and constitution are liable to fall into a direct violation of them."-Burke's Speech on Fox's East India Bill.