at it has been decided, that, in regard to contracts entered
into after the passage of any State bankrupt law, between the citizens
of the State having such law, and sued in the State courts, a State
discharge may prevail. So far, effect has been given to State laws. I
have great respect, habitually, for judicial decisions; but it has
nevertheless, I must say, always appeared to me that the distinctions on
which these decisions are founded are slender, and that they evade,
without answering, the objections founded on the great political and
commercial objects intended to be secured by this part of the
Constitution. But these decisions, whether right or wrong, afford no
effectual relief. The qualifications and limitations which I have stated
render them useless, as to the purpose of a general discharge. So much
of the concerns of every man of business is with citizens of other
States than his own, and with foreigners, that the partial extent to
which the validity of State discharges reaches is of little benefit.

The States, then, cannot pass effectual bankrupt laws; that is,
effectual for the discharge of the debtor. There is no doubt that most,
if not all, the States would now pass such laws, if they had the power;
although their legislation would be various, interfering, and full of
all the evils which the Constitution of the United States intended to
provide against. But they have not the power; Congress, which has the
power, does not exercise it. This is the peculiarity of our condition.
The States would pass bankrupt laws, but they cannot; we can, but we
will not. And between this want of power in the States and want of will
in Congress, unfortunate insolvents are left to hopeless bondage. There
are probably one or two hundred thousand debtors, honest, sober, and
industrious, who drag out lives useless to themselves, useless to their
families, and useless to their country, for no reason but that they
cannot be legally discharged from debts in which misfortunes have
involved them, and which there is no possibility of their ever paying. I
repeat, again, that these cases have now been accumulating for a whole
generation.

It is true they are not imprisoned; but there may be, and there are,
restraint and bondage outside the walls of the jail, as well as in.
Their power of earning is, in truth, taken away, their faculty of useful
employment is paralyzed, and hope itself become extinguished. Creditors,
generally, are no