Bell v. Morrison (1828) 26 U.S. 351, dealt with a situation where the statute of limitations had already run against the debt when the purported waiver was made. The Court referred to a statute of limitations but, by modern standards, the law at issue was a statute of repose. The court recognized the statute as "a wise and beneficial law" that "afforded security against stale demands, after the true state of the transaction may have been forgotten, or be incapable of explanation, by reason of the death or removal of witnesses." (Id.) The high court observed: "It has a manifest tendency to produce speedy settlements of accounts, and to suppress those prejudices which may rise up at a distance of time, and baffle every honest effort to counteract or overcome them." (Id.) The opinion stated: "The question is not, however, as to the authority of a partner after the dissolution to adjust an admitted and subsisting debt; we mean admitted by the whole partnership or unbarred by the statute; but whether he can, by his sole act, after the action is barred by lapse of time, revive it against all the partners, without any new authority communicated to him for this purpose." It was expressly declared that "each partner may, therefore, bind the partnership by his contract in the partnership business; but he can not bind it by any contract beyond those limits. A dissolution, however, puts an end to the authority. By force of its terms it operates as a revocation of all power to create new contracts, and the right of the partner can extend no further than to settle the partnership concerns already existing, and to distribute the remaining funds. Even this right may be qualified and restrained by the express delegation of the whole authority to one of the partners." "If we proceed one step further, and admit loose and general expressions, from which a probable or possible inference may be deduced of the acknowledgment of a debt by a court or jury, that, as the language of some cases has been, any acknowledgment, however slight, or any statement not amounting to a denial of the debt, that any admission of the existence of an unsettled account, without any specification of amount or balance, and however indeterminate and casual, are yet sufficient to take the case out of the statute of limitations, and to let in evidence, aliunde, to establish any debt, however large, and at whatever distance of time; it is easy to perceive that the wholesome objects of the statute must be, in a great measure, defective, and the statute virtually repealed." Justice Story commented: "It is a wise and beneficial law, not designed merely to raise a presumption of payment of a just debt from lapse of time, but to afford security against stale demands, after the true state of the transactions may have been forgotten, or be incapable of explanation, by reason of the death or removal of witnesses. It has a manifest tendency to produce speedy settlements of accounts, and to suppress those perjuries which may rise up at a distance of time, and baffle every honest effort to counteract or overcome them. The statute of limitations was not enacted to protect persons from claims fictitious in their origin, but from ancient claims, whether well or ill founded, which may have been discharged, but the evidence of discharge may be lost."