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1 Reply to the "Argument of Counsel on the Part of the State" in the Case of the Providence Bank vs. T. G. Pitman, Treasurer 1830

handle is hein.trials/racps0001 and id is 1 raw text is: REPLY TO THE ARGUMENT OF COUNSEL ON THE PART OF THE STATE, IN THE CASE OF TUE PROVIDENCE BANK vs. T. G. PITMAN, Treasurer, tc. 4-c. The single question in this case is, whether the law of Rhode Island, which was enacted in the year 1822, imposing a duty on licensed persons and others, and bodies corporate, within the State, infringes or impairs the contract involved in the terms of a prior law of the same State, passed in November, 1791, instituting the corporation of the Providence Bank, and conferring certain faculties, rights, and privi- leges, upon that corporation? This question has branched out, in argu- ment, into topics of wide import, and various illustration. In reply to the arguments sustaining the entire validity of the first named law, in all its operation and effect upon the charter of the Bank, I shall endea- vor to simplify the principles upon which the opposite argument rests, and to apply them to the leading topics of the answer to it, in that condensed form to which the lucid statements and reasonings of my learned colleague have so effectually cleared my way. The former adjudications of this Court upon that clause of the Con- stitution of the United States, which declares that no State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts, (such being a col- lation of the very words of the Constitution bearing on contracts, among other prohibited subjects of State legislation, enumerated in the 10th section,) have already enunciated all the principles necessary to be cited in this argument, to determine the meaning, the opera- tion, and effect, of this constitutional prohibition of State power. These regard, first, the intent and meaning of the term contracts; and, secondly, the effect of the prohibition, in the nature and de- gree of the protection extended to such contracts under its sanction. Upon the authority of these adjudications, certain established princi- ples are now to be granted, without further proof, and to be received as axioms of the law. The term contracts, used in the Constitution, comprehends, as well those between two States, or between a State and private indi, viduals, as those between two or more private individuals, citizens or not citizens of the State, the validity of whose law is drawn in question. It comprehends not only such as remain executory or in action, but all vested rights and interests in any species of property, corpo- real or incorporeal ; and, among these, the franchises and property of private corporations, whether created for any expressed considera- tion of definite value, or for any declared objects of public utility, or purporting to be merely gratuitous, as between grantor and grantee,

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