rom its negative side, through
the clause of the Constitution which forbade any state to impair the
validity of contracts, and Marshall took up this aspect of the task
where Jay left it. In Marshall's mind his work was simple. He had only
to determine the nature of a contract, and the rest followed
automatically. All contracts were to be held sacred. Their greater or
less importance was immaterial.

In 1810 Marshall expounded this general principle in Fletcher _v_.
Peck.[18] "When ... a law is in its nature a contract ... a repeal of
the law cannot devest" rights which have vested under it. A couple of
years later he applied his principle to the extreme case of an unlimited
remission of taxation.[19] The State of New Jersey had granted an
exemption from taxation to lands ceded to certain Indians. Marshall held
that this contract ran with the land, and inured to the benefit of
grantees from the Indians. If the state cared to resume its power of
taxation, it must buy the grant back, and the citizens of New Jersey
must pay for their improvidence.

Seven years later, in 1810, Marshall may, perhaps, be said to have
reached the culmination of his career, for then he carried his moral
standard to a breaking strain. But, though his theory broke down,
perhaps the most striking evidence of his wonderful intellectual
superiority is that he convinced the Democrat, Joseph Story,--a man who
had been nominated by Madison to oppose him, and of undoubted strength
of character,--of the soundness of his thesis. In 1769 King George III
incorporated certain Trustees of Dartmouth College. The charter was
accepted and both real and personal property were thereupon conveyed to
this corporate body, in trust for educational purposes. In 1816 the
legislature of New Hampshire reorganized the board of trustees against
their will. If the incorporation amounted to a contract, the Court was
clear that this statute impaired it; therefore the only really debatable
issue was whether the grant of a charter by the king amounted to a
contract by him, with his subjects to whom he granted it. After
prolonged consideration Marshall concluded that it did, and I conceive
that, in the eye of history, he was right. Throughout the Middle Ages
corporate privileges of all kinds, but especially municipal corporate
privileges, had been subjects of purchase and sale, and indeed the
mediaeval social system rested on such contracts. So much was this the
case that the ri