e state tax unconstitutional. The State was
ultimately obliged to make restitution of the funds of the Bank.

[Map: Canals in the United States about 1825]

Meantime, the national judiciary had contributed to the expansion of the
Constitution in notable ways; sometimes by affirming the
constitutionality of powers exercised by the President or Congress, and
at other times by narrowing the limits of state authority. In the case
of the _American Insurance Company_ v. _Canter_, twenty-five years after
the acquisition of Louisiana, Marshall affirmed the constitutionality
of the treaty which had so aroused Jefferson's misgivings. "The
Constitution," said the Chief Justice, "confers absolutely on the
Government of the Union the powers of making war and of making treaties;
consequently, that Government possesses the power of acquiring
territory, either by conquest or by treaty."

In two instances, on the other hand, the Supreme Court gave an
interpretation of the "obligation of contracts" clause of the
Constitution which seriously limited the powers of the States. In the
case of _Fletcher_ v. _Peck_ (1810), the court declared unconstitutional
an act of the legislature of Georgia which attempted to revoke the
notorious Yazoo land grants of 1795. A grant was held to be a contract
within the meaning of the Constitution; and the court found no adequate
ground for exempting such contracts from the prohibition of the
Constitution.

Far-reaching in its implication, also, was the second instance, when the
Supreme Court held unconstitutional and void the acts of the New
Hampshire legislature which amended the charter granted by the Crown to
Dartmouth College in 1769. Arguing as counsel for the college, of which
he was an honored graduate, Daniel Webster held that the charter of a
private corporation was a contract which might not be impaired by an act
of a state legislature. Chief Justice Marshall only restated and
amplified Webster's argument, when he rendered the opinion of the court
and declared that New Hampshire might not by law impair the charter of
Dartmouth College. To the argument of the counsel for the Commonwealth,
contending that the framers of the Constitution never contemplated such
a broad use of the word "contract," Marshall replied that it was not
enough to say this particular use of the word was not in the mind of the
Convention when the article was adopted. "It is necessary to go farther,
and to say that, had this