on the one hand, and the British
Crown, on the other, which contract still continued in force between the
State of New Hampshire, as the successor to the Crown and Government of
Great Britain, and the trustees, as successors to the donors. The
charter, in other words, was not simply a grant--rather it was the
documentary record of a still existent agreement between still existent
parties.[1620] Taking this view, which he developed with great ingenuity
and persuasiveness, Marshall was able to appeal to the obligation of
contracts clause directly, and without further use of his fiction in
Fletcher _v._ Peck of an executory contract accompanying the grant.

A difficulty still remained, however, in the requirement that a contract
must, before it can have obligation, import consideration, that is to
say, must be shown not to have been entirely gratuitous on either side.
Nor was the consideration which induced the Crown to grant a charter to
Dartmouth College a merely speculative one. It consisted of the
donations of the donors to the important public interest of education.
Fortunately or unfortunately, in dealing with this phase of the case,
Marshall used more sweeping terms than were needful. "The objects for
which a corporation is created," he wrote, "are universally such as the
government wishes to promote. They are deemed beneficial to the country;
and this benefit constitutes the consideration, and in most cases, the
sole consideration of the grant." In other words, the simple fact of the
charter having been granted imports consideration from the point of view
of the State.[1621] With this doctrine before it, the Court in
Providence Bank _v._ Billings,[1622] and again in Charles River Bridge
Company _v._ Warren Bridge Company,[1623] admitted, without discussion
of the point, the applicability of the Dartmouth College decision to
purely business concerns.

Classes of Cases Under the Clause

The cases just reviewed produce two principal lines of decisions
stemming from the obligation of contracts clause: first, public grants;
second, private executory contracts. The chief category of the first
line of cases consists, in turn, of those involving corporate
privileges, both those granted directly by the States and those granted
by municipalities by virtue of authority conferred upon them by the
State;[1624] while private debts, inclusive of municipal debts, exhaust
for the most part the second line.

Public Grants