LINGAN v. HENDERSON. 27S

by the Constitution of the Union, that no State shall pass any law
impairing the obligation of contracts.

But, if a bond, promissory note, or contract binding two or more
persons could be split up among them, and their general and com-
mon liability portioned out upon each, it might, in that way, be so
essentially altered as to be no longer the contract into which they
entered; its benefits might be cut down, scattered and totally lost;
its burthens might be made to bear upon each in a manner wholly
different from that to which he had consented; and its incidental
obligations, entitling a contractor to a remedy over, or to contribu-
tion, might be partially or totally set aside without his consent, and
to his utter ruin. These would be some of the inevitable conse-
quences of allowing a plea of the statute of limitations to be
received as a bar of the cause of suit founded upon such a contract,
so far only as to be an exoneration of the contractor, by whom it
was pleaded, leaving the others to bear the whole burthen or only
so much of it as should remain, after, some how or other, deduct-
ing that which ought to have been borne by him who had been so
discharged. Any such partial or proportional impairment of the
contract would, however, not only be unjust and unconstitutional,
but the execution of such a rule, as, that a plea of limitations
should enure only to the benefit of him who pleads it, might be
found, in cases, such as creditors' suits, where a great number of
persons had been brought or let in as parties having a variety of
conflicting interests in the controversy, to be arithmetically and
absolutely impracticable.

But, in the case now under consideration, there was origi-
nally but one person, John Henderson, liable under the contract
set forth in the complainants' bill; and therefore, any acknow-
ledgment coming from him might well have been considered as a
new contract, upon the terms set forth, so as to bind him, and take
the case out of the statute of limitations; but by his death, the
liability has devolved upon all these defendants; and therefore,
as no one of them has the power alone to make a new contract
upon the same terms so as, in like manner, to bind all the others;
so no tacit admission, or acknowledgment, or even express pro-
mise of any one of them can be received as sufficient to take
the case out of the statute of limitations, if it shall appear to
have been properly applied and relied upon by this defendant,
•Richard Henderson, alone.