But doubtless, the critic will urge, by the same sign this decision also put profit-seeking corporations beyond wholesome legislative control. But is this a fact? To begin with, such a criticism is clearly misdirected. As we have just seen, the New Hampshire Superior Court itself would have felt that Fletcher vs. Peck left it no option but to declare the amending act void, had Dartmouth College been, say, a gas company; and this was in all probability the universal view of bench and bar in 1819. Whatever blame there is should therefore be awarded the earlier decision. But, in the second place, there does not appear after all to be so great measure of blame to be awarded. The opinion in Dartmouth College vs. Woodward leaves it perfectly clear that legislatures may reserve the right to alter or repeal at will the charters they grant. If therefore alterations and repeals have not been as frequent as public policy has demanded, whose fault is it? Perhaps, however, it will be argued that the real mischief of the decision has consisted in its effect upon the state Legislatures themselves, the idea being that large business interests, when offered the opportunity of obtaining irrepealable charters, have frequently found it worth their while to assail frail legislative virtue with irresistible temptation. The answer to this charge is a "confession in avoidance"; the facts alleged are true enough but hardly to the point. Yet even if they were, what is to be said of that other not uncommon incident of legislative history, the legislative "strike," whereby corporations not protected by irrepealable charters are blandly confronted with the alternative of having their franchises mutilated or of paying handsomely for their immunity? So the issue seems to resolve itself into a question of taste regarding two species of legislative "honesty." Does one prefer that species which, in the words of the late Speaker Reed, manifests itself in "staying bought," or that species which flowers in legislative blackmail? The truth of the matter is that Marshall's decision has been condemned by ill-informed or ill-intentioned critics for evils which are much more simply and much more adequately explained by general human cupidity and by the power inherent in capital. These are evils which have been experienced quite as fully in other countries which never heard of the "obligation of contracts" clause.