such lands, were void, because they impaired the obligation of the contract. Nothing (said the court) can be more clear upon principles of law and reason, than that a law, which denies to the owner of the land a remedy to secure the possession of it, when withheld by any person, however innocently he may have obtained it; or to recover the profits received from it by the occupant; or which clogs his recovery of such possession and profits, by conditions and restrictions, tending to diminish the value and amount of the thing recovered; impairs his right to, and interest in, the property. If there be no remedy to recover the possession, the law necessarily presumes a want of right to it. If the remedy afforded be qualified and restrained by conditions of any kind, the right of the owner may indeed subsist, and be acknowledged; but it is impaired, and rendered insecure, according to the nature and extent of such restrictions.[1] But statutes and limitations, which are mere regulations of the remedy, for the purposes of general repose and quieting titles, are not supposed to impair the right; but merely to provide for the prosecution of it within a reasonable period; and to deem the non-prosecution within the period an abandonment of it.[2]
§ 1391. Whether a state legislature has authority to pass a law declaring a marriage void, or to award a divorce, has, incidentally, been made a question, but has never yet come directly in judgment. Marriage, though it be a civil institution, is understood to constitute a solemn, obligatory contract between the parties. And it has been, arguendo, denied, that a state legislaturevol. iii.34
