Should
abuses creep into one part, they are reformed by those that remain
sound."
7. "To consider all debts contracted, and engagements entered into,
before the adoption of this Constitution, as being no less valid against
the United States, under this Constitution, than under the
Confederation."
This can only be considered as a declaratory proposition; and may have
been inserted, among other reasons, for the satisfaction of the foreign
creditors of the United States, who cannot be strangers to the pretended
doctrine, that a change in the political form of civil society has the
magical effect of dissolving its moral obligations.
Among the lesser criticisms which have been exercised on the
Constitution, it has been remarked that the validity of engagements
ought to have been asserted in favor of the United States, as well as
against them; and in the spirit which usually characterizes little
critics, the omission has been transformed and magnified into a plot
against the national rights. The authors of this discovery may be told,
what few others need to be informed of, that as engagements are in their
nature reciprocal, an assertion of their validity on one side,
necessarily involves a validity on the other side; and that as the
article is merely declaratory, the establishment of the principle in one
case is sufficient for every case.
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