Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/663

LAVIN V. EMIGBANT INDUSTEUIi SAVINOS BANK. 655 �livering the opinion of the supreme court, says: "It wouldbe unjust to the memory of the distinguished men wha framed it to suppose that it was designed to protect a mere barren and abstract right, without any practical operation upon the business of life. It was undoubtedly adopted as a part of the constitution for a great and usef ul purpose. It was to main- tain the integrity of contracts, and to secure their faithful execution throughout this Union, by placing them under the protection of the constitution of the United States; and it would but ill become this court, under any circumstances, to depart from the plain meaning of the words used, and to sanc- tion a distinction between the right and the remedy, which would render this provision illusive and nugatory — mere words of form, affording no protection and producing no practical results." �Accordingly the supreme court has uniformly held that any law subsequent to the making of a contract, materially im- pairing the remedies for its enforcement to which the obligee was entitled at the time it was made, is void as impairing the obligation of the contract. Bronson v. Kingee, 1 How. 318. And in Green v. Biddle, 8 Wheat. 75, Mr. Justice "Wash- ington says: "Nothing, in short, can be more clear upon principles of law and equity than that a law which denies to the owner of land a remedy to recover the possession of it when withheld by any person, however innocently he may have obtained it, or to recover the profits received from it by the occupant, or which clogs the reeovery of such possession and profits by conditions and restrictions tending to diminish the value and amount of the thing recovered, impairs bis right to and interest in the property. If there be no remedy to recover the possession, the law necessarily presumes a want of right to it. If the remedy afforded be qualified and restrained by conditions of any kind, the right of the owner may indeed subsist and be acknowledged, but it is impaired and rendered insecure according to the nature of such re- striction." �Further citations are clearly unnecessary for the proposi- tion that in the construction of this constitutional prohibition ��� �