ase, then, of a debt already existing, it is
admitted that the act does impair the obligation of contracts. We wish
the full extent of this decision to be well considered. It is not merely
that the legislature of the State cannot interfere by law, in the
particular case of A or B, to injure or impair rights which have become
vested under contracts; but it is, that they have no power by general
law to regulate the manner in which all debtors may be discharged from
subsisting contracts; in other wrords, they cannot pass general bankrupt
laws to be applied _in presenti_. Now, it is not contended that such
laws are unjust, and ought not to be passed by any legislature. It is
not said that they are unwise or impolitic. On the contrary, we know the
general practice to be, that, when bankrupt laws are established, they
make no distinction between present and future debts. While all agree
that special acts, made for individual cases, are unjust, all admit that
a general law, made for all cases, may be both just and politic. The
question, then, which meets us on the threshold is this: If the
Constitution meant to leave the States the power of establishing systems
of bankruptcy to act upon future debts, what great or important object
of a political nature is answered by denying the power of making such
systems applicable to existing debts?

The argument used in _Sturges v. Crowninshield_ was, at least, a
plausible and consistent argument. It maintained that the prohibition of
the Constitution was levelled only against interferences in individual
cases, and did not apply to general laws, whether those laws were
retrospective or prospective in their operation. But the court rejected
that conclusion. It decided that the Constitution was intended to apply
to general laws or systems of bankruptcy; that an act providing that all
debtors might be discharged from all creditors, upon certain conditions,
was of no more validity than an act providing that a particular debtor,
A, should be discharged on the same conditions from his particular
creditor, B.

It being thus decided that general laws are within the prohibition of
the Constitution, it is for the plaintiff in error now to show on what
ground, consistent with the general objects of the Constitution, he can
establish a distinction which can give effect to those general laws in
their application to future debts, while it denies them effect in their
application to subsisting debts. Th