rying gust of politics, and
will float wildly backwards and forwards on the irregular and impetuous
tides of party and faction."[1607]

Furthermore, in its first important constitutional case, that of
Chisholm _v._ Georgia,[1608] the Court ruled that its original
jurisdiction extended to an action in assumpsit brought by a citizen of
South Carolina against the State of Georgia. This construction of the
federal judicial power was, to be sure, promptly repealed by the
Eleventh Amendment, but without affecting the implication that the
contracts protected by the Constitution included public contracts.

One important source of this diversity of opinion is to be found in that
ever welling spring of constitutional doctrine in early days, the
prevalence of Natural Law notions and the resulting vague significance
of the term "law." In Sturges _v._ Crowninshield, as we saw, Marshall
defined the _obligation of contracts_ as "the law which binds the
parties to perform their undertaking." Whence, however, comes this law?
If it comes from the State alone, which Marshall was later to deny even
as to private contracts,[1609] then it is hardly possible to hold that
the States' own contracts are covered by the clause, which manifestly
does not _create_ an obligation for contracts but only protects such
obligation as already exists. But if, on the other hand, the law
furnishing the obligation of contracts comprises Natural Law and kindred
principles, as well as law which springs from State authority, then,
inasmuch as the State itself is presumably bound by such principles, the
State's own obligations, so far as harmonious with them, are covered by
the clause.

Fletcher _v._ Peck

Fletcher _v._ Peck,[1610] which was decided in 1810, has the double
claim to fame that it was the first case in which the Supreme Court held
a State enactment to be in conflict with the Constitution,[1611] and
also the first case to hold that the contracts clause protected public
grants. By an act passed on January 7, 1795, the Georgia Legislature
directed the sale to four land companies of public lands comprising most
of what are now the States of Alabama and Mississippi. As soon became
known, the passage of the measure had been secured by open and wholesale
bribery. So when a new legislature took over in the winter of 1795-1796,
almost its first act was to revoke the sale made the previous year.

Meantime, however, the land companies had disposed of sev