v. Powder River Live Stock Co., 132 Fed. 434; Cyc. of L. and P. rd. 25, pp. 986-7. A statute shortening the period of limitation is not within the constitutional power of the legislature, unless a reasonable time, taking into consideration the nature of the case, is allowed for the bringing of a suit after the passage of the statute and before the bar takes effect. Turner v. New York, 168 U. S. 90. See also, McGahey v. Virginia, 135 U. S. 662. An existing right of action can not be taken away by shortening the period of limitation to a time which has expired already. Sohn v. Waterson, 17 Wall. 596. The statute is void, if the period fixed by it is unreasonably short, and designed to defeat the remedy upon pre-existing contracts which is a part of their obligation. Edwards v. Kearzey, 96 U. S. 595. A statute is unreasonable and obnoxious to the objection that it impairs the rights of private property, if it bars a past right of action without any provision for a period within which an action may be brought. Hope v. Johnson, 2 Yerg. 123; United States v. Sampernac, 1 Hampst. 118; Cutts v. Hardee, 38 Ga. 350; Rathbone v. Bradford, 1 Ala. 312; Coosa River S. Co. v. Barclay, 30 Ala. 120; Holcome v. Tracy, 2 Minn. 241; Cook v. Wood, 1 McCord L. 139; Beltzhoover v. Yewell, 11 Gil. & J. 212; Cox v. Berry, 13 Ga. 306; Billings v. Hall, 7 Cal. 1; Blackford v. Pether, 1 Black. 36; Griffin v. McKenzie, 7 Ga. 163; Ward v. Kelts, 12 Wend. 137; Eckstein v. Shoemer, 3 Meart. 15; Frey v. Kirk, 4 Gil. & J. 509; Hawkins v. Barney, 5 Pet. 458; Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 11 Pet. 420; Satterlee v. Matthewson, 16 Serg. & R. 169; Weister v. Hade, 52 Penn. 474. See Ed. note Co-op. ed. Supreme Court Reports, No. 34, p. 660. Subject to the foregoing exceptions such statutes are valid; and, applying to the remedy merely, their retroactive operation is no objection to them.

§ 292. When statutes of limitation may be retroactive. The Federal Constitution does not deprive a state of the right to enact retroactive laws divesting vested rights,

provided they do not impair contract obligations and are not ex post facto. Watson v. Mercer, 8 Pet. 88; Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 11 Pet. 420; Baltimore & S. R. Co. v. Nesbit, 10 How. 395. Such laws may be proper or necessary as relate back to a period antecedent to their enactment, and which have the effect of saving time from the statute of limitations or of excusing acts which were unlawful when committed. Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386. "A retroactive effect has accordingly been given statutes providing a new mode of enforcing claims against the state (Chapman v. State, 104 Cal. 690) or county (Gilman v. Contra Costa County, 6 Cal. 676), authorizing the issue of executions (Myers v. Moran, 113 N. Y. App. Div. 427) and attachments (Kuehn v. Paroni, 20 Nev. 203; Rouge v. Rouge, 114 Misc. (N. Y.) 421; Swartz v. Lawrence, 12 Phila. 181) in cases where they were not permitted before, authorizing a particular procedure for the settlement of estates (Fitzhugh v. Fitzhugh, 6 B. Mon. 4), authorizing the foreclosure of mortgages in certain cases (Kennebec, etc., R. Co. v. Portland, etc., R. Co., 59 Me. 9), relating to the enforcement of liens (Orman v. Crystal River R. Co., 5 Colo. App. 493), regulating the parties to an action for death by wrongful act (Berry v. Kansas City, etc., R. Co., 52 Kan. 759), relating to the remedy on bonds given by an insolvent petitioner (State v. Burke, 2 Gill. (Md.) 79), relating to the limitations of actions (Stine v. Bennett, 13 Minn. 153; Crooks v. Crooks, 4 Grant Cp. (N. C.) 615; Notman v. Crooks, 10 N. C. Q. B. 105), relating to the extension of chattel mortgages (Aultman, etc., Mach. Co. v. Fish, 120 Ill. App. 314), allowing recoupment of usurious interest (Bowen v. Phillips, 55 Ind. 226), making compliance with certain conditions a necessary prerequisite to the validity of certain defenses (Erskine v. Glidden, Me. [1886], 3 Atl. 651), and even to statutes relating to procedure in criminal cases (State v. Maine, 16 Wis. 398). But any generalization founded on the distinction between right and remedy is attended with some danger because of the

difficulty of drawing the distinction accurately (Kent v. Gray, 53 N. H. 576, 579); and where the remedy is taken away altogether (Knight v. Lee, [1893] 1 Q. B. 41, 62 L. J. Q. B. 28), or is encumbered with conditions that would render it useless or impracticable to pursue it (Ball v. Anderson, 196 Pa. St. 86), where, under the guise of making a change in the remedy a new right or obligation is created (Indianapolis, etc., R. Co. v. Kercheval, 16 Ind. 84; Plummer v. Northern Pac. R. Co., 152 Fed. 206; Dixen v. Winnipeg Electric St. R. Co., 11 Manitoba 528), or where the intention of the legislature to give the statutes only prospective operation is clearly expressed in the act (Crawford v. State, Minor (Ala.) 143; People v. Hays, 4 Cal. 127; Louisiana Citizens' Bank v. Devnoodt, 25 La. Ann. 628; Fuller v. Grand Rapids, 40 Mich. 395; Lovell v. Arnold, 2 Leigh 16; Sears v. Mahoney, 66 Fed. 860), it will not be construed to effect remedies and procedure as to causes of action answering before its passage. "Cyc. of L. and P. Vol. 3, pp. 1213-14. In Kentucky Union Co. v. Kentucky, 219 U. S. 140, it was held that a statute of that state was not lacking in due process which forfeited to the state, for the benefit of actual occupants in adverse possession, in case of failure of the owner or claimant to list the lands and pay the taxes therein for certain specified years, because the effect was to cut down the period of limitation in which actions could be brought by the holders of the title to recover against adverse claimants.

§ 293. When exemption from suit, by the ending of the completed statutory period, becomes a vested right. Bearing in mind the generally recognized distinction between the effect of a statute of limitations when it is based on the possession of real or personal property and when it defines a mere period of prescription for the assertion of a right of action (Townsend v. Jamson, 9 How. 407), it may be said that when it is based on possession it ripens into a title which is a vested right,

because adverse possession for the period prescribed by statute confers a title as perfect and complete as a grant. Such a vested right the legislature cannot defeat or take away by subsequent legislation. Atkinson v. Dunlap, 50 Me. 111; Bagg's App., 43 Pa. 512; Ryder v. Wilson, 41 N. J. L. 9; Sprechler v. Wakeley, 11 Wis. 432; Hoden v. James, 11 Mass. 396; Lewis v. Webb, 3 Me. 326; Woodman v. Fulton, 47 Miss. 682; Naught v. Oneal, Breese (Ill.) 36; Gordner v. Stephens, 1 Heisk. 280; Parish v. Edgar, 15 Wis. 532; Martin v. Martin, 35 Ala. 560; Sharon v. Tucker, 144 U. S. 533; Toltec Ranch Co. v. Cook, 191 U. S. 532; Davis v. Mills, 194 U. S. 456; Northern Pac. R. Co. v. Ely, 197 U. S. 1. A very different condition of things exists when a statute is only a legislative bar to a right of action, as for a debt, because the debt is not paid by lapse of time, nor is there in equity any vested right not to pay the debt, even after the statutory period has barred the right of action. In explaining that distinction in Campbell v. Holt, 115 U. S. 620, the Court said: "The English and American statutes of limitation have in many cases the same effect, and, if there is any conflict of decisions on the subject, the weight of authority is in favor of the proposition that, where one has had the peaceable, undisturbed, open possession of real or personal property, with an assertion of his ownership, for the period which, under the law, would bar an action for its recovery by the real owner, the former has acquired a good title-a title superior to that of the latter, whose neglect to avail himself of his legal rights has lost him his title. This doctrine has been repeatedly asserted in this court. Leffingwell v. Warren, 2 Black 599; Croxall v. Shererd, 5 Wall. 289; Dickerson v. Colgrove, 100 U. S. 583; Bicknell v. Comstock, 113 U. S. 152. It is the doctrine of the English courts, and has been often asserted in the highest courts of the states of the Union. It may therefore, very well be held that in an action to recover real or personal property where the question is as to the removal of the bar of the statute of limitations by a legis

lative act passed after the bar has become perfect, such act deprives the party of his property without due process of law. The reason is, that, by the law in existence before the repealing act, the property had become the defendant's. Both the legal title and the real ownership had become vested in him, and to give the act the effect of transferring this title to plaintiff would be to deprive him of his property without due process of law.

But we are of opinion that to remove the bar which the statute of limitations enables a debtor to interpose to prevent the payment of his debt stands on very different ground. A case aptly illustrating this difference in the effect of the statute of limitations is found in 3 J. J. Marshall's Ky. R. 364 (Smart v. Baugh), in which the opinion was delivered by Chief Justice Robertson, 'A debt barred by time is a sufficient consideration for a new assumpsit. The statute of limitations only disqualifies the plaintiff to recover a debt by suit if the defendant rely on time in his plea. It is a personal privilege, accorded by law for reasons of public expediency; and the privilege can only be asserted by plea.' The distinction between the effect of statutes of limitation in vesting rights to real and personal property and its operation as a defense to contracts, is well stated in Jones v. Jones, 18 Ala. 248. See also, Langdell's Equity Pleadings, §§ 118, et sequitur." Approved in Sharon v. Tucker, 144 U. S. 544; In re Burton, 29 Fed. 639; Hulbert v. Clark, 128 N. Y. 298.

§ 294. Montoyo v. Gonzales. In that case (232 U. S. 375), it was held that by "a peculiar statute," not "the ordinary statute of limitation," under which ten years' possession by a disseizor of a strip of a grant lying between the Rio Grande and the foothills to the west, under a deed purporting to convey the land from the river westward to the ridge of Rio Puerco, and giving title to the whole did not deprive the heirs of the original grantee in the Alameda land grant of their property