'On the 1st of January, 1838, the State held stock in the Planters' Bank for $2,000,000, which stock had, prior to that time, yielded to the State a dividend of $200,000 per annum. I found also the first instalment of the bonds issued on account of the Planters' Bank, $125,000, due and unpaid, as well as the interest for several years on said bonds.' (Sen. Jour. 25.) The Planters' Bank (as well as the State), by the express terms of the law, was bound for the principal and interest of these bonds. Now, in 1839, Mississippi passed an act (Acts, ch. 42), 'to transfer the stock now held by the State in the Planters' Bank, and invest the same in stock of the Mississippi Railroad Company.' By the first section of this act, the Governor was directed to subscribe for $2,000,000 of stock in the railroad company for the State, and to pay for it by transferring to the company the Planters' Bank stock, which had been secured to the State by the sale of the Planters' Bank bonds. The 10th section released the Planters' Bank from the obligation to provide for the payment of these bonds or interest. Some enlightened members, including Judge Gholson, afterward of the Federal Court, protested against this act as unconstitutional, by impairing the obligation of contracts, and as a fraud on the bondholders. They say in this protest: 'The money which paid for the stock proposed to be transferred from the Planters' Bank to the Mississippi Railroad Company, was, under the provisions of the charter, obtained by loans on the part of the State, for the payment of which the stock, in addition to the faith of the Government, was pledged to the holders of the bonds of the State. By the terms of the contract between the commissioners on the part of the State and the purchasers of the bonds, the interest on the loans is required to be paid semiannually out of the semiannual dividends _accruing upon the said stock_; and the surplus of such dividends, after paying the said interest, is to be converted into a _sinking fund_ for the payment and liquidation of said loans. The bill, as the title purports, simply provides for the transfer of the stock now held by the State in the Planters' Bank, and that the same shall be invested in the stock of the Mississippi Railroad Company, leading from Natchez to Canton, which has banking privileges to twice the amount of capital stock paid in. The transferring of the stock and dividend to another irresponsible corporation, and the appropriation of the same to the construction of a road, is a violation of and impairing the obligation of the contract made and entered into with the purchasers or holders of the bonds of the State, under a solemn act of the Legislature. If it should be thought that a people, composed of so much virtue, honor, and chivalry, as the noble and generous