Clearly they could have no right to either enforce, or annul, any contract whatever, until they should have ascertained whether it had any "obligation," and, if any, what that "obligation" was. If these courts really do not know--as perhaps they do not--what "the obligation of contracts" is, they deserve nothing but contempt for their ignorance. If they _do_ know what "the obligation of contracts" is, and yet sanction the almost literally innumerable laws that violate it, they deserve nothing but detestation for their villainy. And until they shall suspend all their judgments for either enforcing, or annulling, contracts, or, on the other hand, shall ascertain what "the obligation of contracts" is, and sweep away all State laws that impair it, they will deserve both contempt for their ignorance, and detestation for their crimes. Individual Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States have, at least in one instance, in 1827 (_Ogden vs. Saunders_, 12 Wheaton 213), attempted to give a definition of "the obligation of contracts." But there was great disagreement among them; and no one definition secured the assent of the whole court, _or even of a majority_. Since then, so far as I know, that court has never attempted to give a definition. And, so far as the opinion of that court is concerned, the question is as unsettled now, as it was sixty years ago. And the opinions of the Supreme Courts of the States are equally unsettled with those of the Supreme Court of the United States. The consequence is, that "the obligation of contracts"--the principle on which the real validity, or invalidity, of all contracts whatsoever depends--is practically unknown, or at least unrecognized, by a single court, either of the States, or of the United States. And, as a result, every species of absurd, corrupt, and robber legislation goes on unrestrained, as it always has done. What, now, is the reason why not one of these courts has ever so far given its attention to the subject as to have discovered what "the obligation of contracts" is? What that principle is, I repeat, which they have all sworn to sustain, and on which the real validity, or invalidity, of every contract on which they ever adjudicate, depends? Why is it that they have all gone on sanctioning and enforcing all the nakedly iniquitous laws, by which men's natural right to make their own contracts has been trampled under foot? Surely it is not because they do not know that all men have a natural right to make their own contracts; for they know _that_, as well as they know that all men have a natural right to live, to breathe, to move, to speak, to hear, to see, or to do anything whatever for the support of their lives, or the promotion of their happiness.