The right to contract is the attribute of a free agent, and he may rightfully coerce performance from another free agent, who violates his faith. Contracts have consequently an intrinsic obligation. _[But] When men come into society, they can no longer exercise this original natural right of coercion. It would be incompatible with general peace, and is therefore surrendered._ Society prohibits the use of private individual coercion, _and gives in its place a more safe and more certain remedy_. But the right to contract is not surrendered with the right to coerce performance.--_Ogden vs. Saunders, 12 Wheaton 350._ In this extract, taken in connection with the rest of his opinion in the same case, Marshall convicts himself of the grossest falsehood. He acknowledges that men have a natural right to make their own contracts; that their contracts have an "intrinsic obligation"; and that they have an "original and natural right" to coerce performance of them. And yet he assumes, and virtually asserts, that men _voluntarily "come into society_," and "_surrender_" to "society" their natural right to coerce the fulfilment of their contracts. He assumes, and virtually asserts, that they do this, _upon the ground, and for the reason, that "society gives in its place a more safe and more certain remedy_"; that is, "a more safe and more certain" enforcement of all men's contracts that have "an intrinsic obligation." In thus saying that "men come into society," and "surrender" to society, their "original and natural right" of coercing the fulfilment of contracts, and that "_society gives in its place a more safe and certain remedy_," he virtually says, and means to say, that, _in consideration of such "surrender" of their "original and natural right of coercion," "society" pledges itself to them that it will give them this "more safe and more certain remedy_"; that is, that it will more safely and more certainly enforce their contracts than they can do it themselves. And yet, in the same opinion--only two and three pages preceding this extract--he declares emphatically that "the right" of government--or of what he calls "society"--"_to prohibit such contracts as may be deemed mischievous_, is _unquestionable_."--_p. 347._ And as an illustration of the exercise of this right of "society" to prohibit such contracts "as may be deemed mischievous," he cites the usury laws, thus: The acts against usury declare the contract to be void in the beginning. They deny that the instrument ever became a contract. They deny it all original obligation; and cannot impair that which never came into existence.--_p. 348._