engage in employments the entering upon which is not a matter of common right, and which, because of their liability to abuse, may require special and extraordinary police supervision. The business of selling intoxicating drinks and of setting up a lottery are illustrations of such employments. But the grant of a monopoly in one of the ordinary and necessary avocations of life must be as clearly illegal in this country as in England; and it would be impossible to defend and sustain it, except upon the broad ground that the legislature may control and regulate the ordinary avocations of life, even to the extent of fixing the prices of labor and of commodities. As no one pretends that the legislature possesses such a power, and as its existence would be wholly inconsistent with regulated liberty, it must follow that lawful grants of special privileges must be confined to cases where they will take from citizens, generally, nothing which before pertained to them as of common right.1

Changes in the General Laws. We have said in another place that citizens have no vested right in the existing general laws of the State which can preclude their amendment or repeal, and that there is no implied promise on the part of the State to protect its citizens against incidental injury occasioned by changes in the law. Nevertheless there may be laws which amount to propositions on the part of the State, which, if accepted by individuals, will become binding contracts. Of this class are perhaps to be considered bounty laws, by which the State promises the payment of a gratuity to any one who will do any particular act supposed to be for the State interest. Unquestionably the State may repeal such a law at any time; but, when the proposition has been accepted by the performance of the act before the law is repealed, the contract would seem to be complete, and the promised gratuity becomes a legal debt. And where a State was owner of the stock of a bank, and by the law its bills and notes were to be received in payment of all debts due to the State, it

2

1 In Live Stock, &c. Association v. 24 How. 300; East Saginaw Salt Crescent City, &c. Co., commonly Manuf. Co. v. East Saginaw, 19 Mich. known as the Slaughter-House Case, 259; s. c. 2 Am. Rep. 82, and 13 16 Wall. 36, the grant of an exclusive Wall. 373. privilege in slaughtering cattle in the vicinity of New Orleans was upheld as an exercise of the police power. Christ Church v. Philadelphia,

8 People v. Auditor-General, 9 Mich. 327. See Montgomery v. Kasson, 16 Cal. 189; Adams v. Palmer, 51 Me. 480.

was properly held that this law constituted a contract with those who should receive the bills before its repeal, and that a repeal of the law could not deprive these holders of the right which it assured. Such a law, with the acceptance of the bills under it, 66 comes within the definition of a contract. It is a contract founded upon a good and valuable consideration, — a consideration beneficial to the State; as its profits are increased by sustaining the credit, and consequently extending the circulation, of the paper of the bank." 1

That laws permitting the dissolution of the contract of marriage are not within the intention of the clause of the Constitution under discussion, seems to be the prevailing opinion. It has been intimated, however, that, so far as property rights are concerned, the contract must stand on the same footing as any other, and that a law passed after the marriage, vesting the property in

the wife for her sole use, would be void, as impairing [* 285] the obligation of contracts. But certainly there is no

such contract embraced in the marriage as would prevent the legislature changing the law, and vesting in the wife solely all property which she should acquire thereafter; and, if the property had already become vested in the husband, it would be protected in him, against legislative transfer to the wife, on other grounds than the one here indicated.

"The obligation of a contract," it is said, "consists in its binding force on the party who makes it. This depends upon the laws in existence when it is made; these are necessarily referred to in all contracts, and forming a part of them as the measure of the obligation to perform them by the one party, and the right acquired by the other. There can be no other standard by which to ascertain the extent of either, than that which the terms of the contract indicate, according to their settled legal meaning; when it becomes consummated, the law defines the duty and the right, compels one party to perform the thing contracted for, and gives the other a right to enforce the performance by the remedies then in force. If any subsequent law affect to diminish the duty, Maguire v. Maguire, 7 Dana, 183;

1 Woodruff v. Trapnall, 10 How. 190. See Winter v. Jones, 10 Geo. 190; Furman v. Nichol, 8 Wall. 44; Antoni v. Wright, 22 Grat. 833.

2 Per Marshall, Ch. J., Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 629;

Clark v. Clark, 10 N. H. 385; Cronise v. Cronise, 54 Penn. St. 255; Carson v. Carson, 40 Miss. 349; Adams . Palmer, 51 Me. 480.

3 Holmes v. Holmes, 4 Barb. 295.

or to impair the right, it necessarily bears on the obligation of the contract, in favor of one party, to the injury of the other; hence any law which, in its operations, amounts to a denial or obstruction of the rights accruing by a contract, though professing to act only on the remedy, is directly obnoxious to the prohibition of the Constitution."1 "It is the civil obligation of contracts which [the Constitution] is designed to reach; that is, the obligation

*

which is recognized by, and results from, the law of the [* 286] State in which it is made. If, therefore, a contract when made is by the law of the place declared to be illegal, or deemed to be a nullity, or a nude pact, it has no civil obligation; because the law, in such cases, forbids its having any binding efficacy or force. It confers no legal right on the one party, and no correspondent legal duty on the other. There is no means allowed

612.

Johnson v. Higgins, 3 Met. (Ky). 566; People v. Ingersoll, 58 N. Y. 1. Requirement of a license tax for permission to do what a contract with the city gives authority to do, without "let, molestation, or hindrance," is void. Stein v. Mobile, 49 Ala. 362; 20 Am. Rep. 283. But licenses in general are subject to the taxing power. Home Ins. Co. v. Augusta, 93 U. S. Rep. 116; Read v. Beall, 42 Miss. 472; Cooley on Taxation, 386, and cases cited. That a constitutional convention has no more power to violate the obligation of contracts than the legislature, see Oliver v. Memphis, &c. R. R. Co., 30 Ark. 128; ante, p. *33, and cases cited. A law giving interest on debts, which bore none when contracted, was held void in Goggans v. Turnispeed, 1 S. C. N. s. 40; s. c. 7 Am. Rep. 273. The legislature cannot authorize the compulsory extinction of ground rents, on payment of a sum in gross. Palairet's Appeal, 67 Penn. St. 479; s. c. 5 Am. Rep. 450. A State law, discontinuing a public work, does not impair the obligation of contracts, the contractor having his just claim for damages. Lord v. Thomas, 64 N. Y.

1 McCracken v. Hayward, 2 How. "The obligation of a contract ... is the law which binds the parties to perform their agreement. The law, then, which has this binding obligation, must govern and control the contract, in every shape in which it is intended to bear upon it, whether it affects its validity, construction, or discharge. It is, then, the municipal law of the State, whether that be written or unwritten, which is emphatically the law of the contract made within the State, and must govern it throughout, whenever its performance is sought to be enforced." Washington, J., in Ogden v. Saunders, 12 Wheat. 259. "As I understand it, the law of the contract forms its obligation." Thompson, J., ibid. 302. “The obligation of the contract consists in the power and efficacy of the law which applies to, and enforces performance of, the contract, or the payment of an equivalent for nonperformance. The obligation does not inhere and subsist in the contract itself, proprio vigore, but in the law applicable to the contract. This is the sense, I think, in which the Constitution uses the term 'obligation.' Trimble, J., ibid. 318. And see Van 107. Baumbach v. Bade, 9 Wis. 577;

or recognized to enforce it; for the maxim is ex nudo pacto non oritur actio. But, when it does not fall within the predicament of being either illegal or void, its obligatory force is coextensive with its stipulations." 1

Such being the obligation of a contract, it is obvious that the rights of the parties in respect to it are liable to be affected in many ways by changes in the laws, which it could not have been the intention of the constitutional provision to preclude. "There are few laws which concern the general police of a State, or the government of its citizens, in their intercourse with each other or with strangers, which may not in some way or other affect the contracts which they have entered into or may thereafter form. For what are laws of evidence, or which concern remedies, frauds, and perjuries, laws of registration, and those which affect landlord and tenant, sales at auction, acts of limitation, and those which limit the fees of professional men, and the charges of tavern keepers, and a multitude of others which crowd the codes of every State, but laws which affect the validity, construction, or duration, or discharge of contracts?"2 But the changes in these laws are not regarded as necessarily affecting the obligation of contracts. Whatever belongs merely to the remedy, may be altered according to the will of the State, provided the alteration does not impair the obligation of the contract;3 and it does not impair it, provided it leaves the parties a substantial remedy, according to the course of justice as it existed at the time the contract was made.1

1 Story on Const. § 1380. Slave contracts, which were legal when made, are not rendered invalid by the abolition of slavery; nor can the States make them void by their constitutions, or deny remedies for their enforcement. White v. Hart, 13 Wall. 649; Osborn v. Nicholson, 13 Wall. 653; Jacaway v. Denton, 25 Ark. 641. An act of indemnity held not to relieve a sheriff from his obligation on his official bond to account for moneys which had been paid away under military compulsion. State v. Gatzweiler, 49 Mo. 17; s. c. 8 Am. Rep. 119.

2 Washington, J., in Ogden v.

Saunders, 12 Wheat. 259. As to the indirect modification of contracts by the operation of police laws, see post, pp. *574-*584. The taxing power conferred upon a municipal corporation is not a contract between it and the State. Richmond v. Richmond, &c. R. R. Co., 21 Grat. 611.

8 Bronson v. Kinzie, 1 How. 316, per Taney, Ch. J.

♦ Stocking v. Hunt, 3 Denio, 274; Van Baumbach v. Bade, 9 Wis. 578; Bronson v. Kinzie, 1 How. 316; MeCracken v. Hayward, 2 How. 605; Butler v. Palmer, 1 Hill, 324; Van Renselaer v. Snyder, 9 Barb. 302, and 13 N. Y. 299; Conkey v. Hart, 14

* Changes in Remedies. It has accordingly been held [* 287] that laws changing remedies for the enforcement of legal contracts will be valid, even though the new remedy be less convenient than the old, or less prompt and speedy.1

"Without impairing the obligation of the contract, the remedy may certainly be modified as the wisdom of the nation shall direct." To take a strong instance; although the law at the time the contract is made permits the creditor to take the body of his debtor in execution, there can be no doubt of the right to abolish all laws for this purpose, leaving the creditor to his