ees represented the interest of the donors, and that the
terms of the Constitution were broad enough to cover and protect
this representative interest. The last was the only point on which he
confessed a real difficulty. The primary purpose of the constitutional
clause, he owned, was to protect "contracts the parties to which have
a vested beneficial interest" in them, whereas the trustees had no such
interest at stake. But, said he, the case is within the words of the
rule, and "must be within its operation likewise, unless there be
something in the literal construction" obviously at war with the spirit
of the Constitution, which was far from the fact. For, he continued, "it
requires no very critical examination of the human mind to enable us
to determine that one great inducement to these gifts is the conviction
felt by the giver that the disposition he makes of them is immutable.
All such gifts are made in the pleasing, perhaps delusive hope, that the
charity will flow forever in the channel which the givers have marked
out for it. If every man finds in his own bosom strong evidence of
the universality of this sentiment, there can be but little reason to
imagine that the framers of our Constitution were strangers to it, and
that, feeling the necessity and policy of giving permanence and security
to contracts" generally, they yet deemed it desirable to leave this
sort of contract subject to legislative interference. Such is Marshall's
answer to Jefferson's outburst against "the dead hand."

Characteristically, Marshall nowhere cites Fletcher vs. Peck in his
opinion, but he builds on the construction there made of the "obligation
of contracts" clause as clearly as do his associates, Story and
Washington, who cite it again and again in their concurring opinion.
Thus he concedes that the British Parliament, in consequence of its
unlimited power, might at any time before the Revolution have annulled
the charter of the College and so have disappointed the hopes of the
donors; but, he adds, "THE PERFIDY OF THE TRANSACTION WOULD HAVE BEEN
UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED." Later on, he further admits that at the
time of the Revolution the people of New Hampshire succeeded to "the
transcendent power of Parliament," as well as to that of the King, with
the result that a repeal of the charter before 1789 could have been
contested only under the State Constitution. "But the Constitution
of the United States," he continues, "has imposed t