The retrospective effect which a refusal to follow a former decision may have in disturbing vested rights being one of the most cogent reasons for adhering to precedent, there is less objection to departing from it when the decision can be so limited as to have only a future operation. This is occasionally feasible. Thus the High Court of Errors and Appeals of Mississippi by an early decision held that on the dissolution of a bank all its rights and liabilities were extinguished. Thirty years later the Supreme Court of the same State overruled that decision, declaring it "condemned by reason and the principles of modern and enlightened jurisprudence," but nevertheless applied it as a controlling precedent to a case arising out of the dissolution of a bank which had been incorporated previously to the time when the original decision was made.[Footnote: 1 Bank of Mississippi _v._ Duncan, 56 Mississippi Reports, 165.] The effect of overruling a former opinion may also be limited by the dual character of our government. The courts of the United States follow the decisions of the State courts in the determination of matters of State law. If a State law is held by the courts of the State to have a particular meaning and effect it will be accorded the same in the federal courts. But if a federal judgment is for that reason rendered in a certain form, and there is no appeal, it settles the rights of the parties to the suit forever, even should the State courts afterward reverse their former rulings as being erroneous.[Footnote: 2 Deposit Bank _v._ Frankfort, 191 United States Reports, 499.] De Tocqueville, in his estimate of the American bar,[Footnote: 3 "Democracy in America," II, Chap. XVI.] speaks of it as devoted to investigating what has been done rather than what ought to be done; to the pursuit of precedent rather than of reason.