The disposition to guard the interests of the property-holding class rather than to prevent legislation for their advantage is also seen in the interpretation which has been given to the provision forbidding the states to pass any laws impairing the obligation of contracts. The framers of the Constitution probably did not have in mind the extended application which the courts have since made of this limitation on the power of the states. Perhaps they intended nothing more than that the states should be prevented from repudiating their just debts. But whatever may have been the intention of the framers themselves, the reactionary movement in which they were the recognized leaders, finally brought about a much broader and, from the point of view of the capitalist class, more desirable interpretation of this provision. There is evidence of a desire to limit the power of the states in this direction even before the Constitutional Convention of 1787 assembled. The legislature of Pennsylvania in 1785 passed a bill repealing an act of 1782 which granted a charter to the Bank of North America. James Wilson, who is said to have suggested the above-mentioned clause of the Federal Constitution, made an argument against the repeal of the charter, in which he claimed that the power, or at least the right of the legislature, to modify or repeal did not apply to all kinds of legislation. It could safely be exercised, he thought, in the case of "a law respecting the rights and properties of all the citizens of the state." "Very different," he says, "is the case with regard to a law, by which the state grants privileges to a congregation or other society.... Still more different is the case with regard to a law by which an estate is vested or confirmed in an individual: if, in this case, the legislature may, at discretion, and without any reason assigned, divest or destroy his estate, then a person seized of an estate in fee-simple, under legislative sanction, is, in truth, nothing more than a solemn tenant at will.... "To receive the legislative stamp of stability and permanency, acts of incorporation are applied for from the legislature. If these acts may be repealed without notice, without accusation, without hearing, without proof, without forfeiture, where is the stamp of their stability?... If the act for incorporating the subscribers to the Bank of North America shall be repealed in this manner, a precedent will be established for repealing, in the same manner, every other legislative charter in Pennsylvania.... Those acts of the state, which have hitherto been considered as the sure anchors of privilege and of property, will become the sport of every varying gust of politics, and will float wildly backwards and forwards on the irregular and impetuous tides of party and faction."[184] In 1810 the case of Fletcher v. Peck[185] was decided in the Supreme Court of the United States. Chief Justice Marshall, in delivering the opinion of the court, said: