A Letter to Grover Cleveland Part 10

But this pretence, it will be seen, utterly discards the idea that contracts have any _natural_ obligation. It implies that contracts have no obligation, except the laws that are made for enforcing them. But if contracts have no _natural_ obligation, they have no obligation at all, _that ought to be enforced_; and the State is a mere usurper, tyrant, and robber, in pa.s.sing any law to enforce them.

Plainly a State cannot rightfully enforce any contracts at all, unless they have a _natural_ obligation.

3. A third pretence, by which the courts attempt to evade this provision of the const.i.tution, is this: They say that "the law is a part of the contract" itself; and therefore cannot impair its obligation.

By this they mean that, if a law is standing upon the statute book, prescribing what obligation certain contracts shall, or shall not, have, it must then be presumed that, whenever such a contract is made, the parties intended to make it according to that law; and really to make the law a part of their contract; _although they themselves say nothing of the kind_.

This pretence, that the law is a part of the contract, is a mere trick to cheat people out of their natural right to make their own contracts; and to compel them to make only such contracts as the lawmakers choose to permit them to make.

To say that it must be presumed that the parties intended to make their contracts according to such laws as may be prescribed to them--or, what is the same thing, to make the laws a part of their contracts--is equivalent to saying that the parties must be presumed to have given up all their natural right to make their own contracts; to have acknowledged themselves imbeciles, incompetent to make reasonable contracts, and to have authorized the lawmakers to make their contracts for them; for if the lawmakers can make any part of a man's contract, and presume his consent to it, they can make a whole one, and presume his consent to it.

If the lawmakers can make any part of men's contracts, they can make the whole of them; and can, therefore, buy and sell, borrow and lend, give and receive men's property of all kinds, according to their (the lawmakers') own will, pleasure, or discretion; without the consent of the real owners of the property, and even without their knowledge, until it is too late. In short, they may take any man's property, and give it, or sell it, to whom they please, and on such conditions, and at such prices, as they please; without any regard to the rights of the owner.

They may, in fact, at their pleasure, strip any, or every, man of his property, and bestow it upon whom they will; and then justify the act upon the presumption that the owner consented to have his property thus taken from him and given to others.

This absurd, contemptible, and detestable trick has had a long lease of life, and has been used as a cover for some of the greatest of crimes.

By means of it, the marriage contract has been perverted into a contract, on the part of the woman, to make herself a legal non-ent.i.ty, or _non compos mentis_; to give up, to her husband, all her personal property, and the control of all her real estate; and to part with her natural, inherent, inalienable right, as a human being, to direct her own labor, control her own earnings, make her own contracts, and provide for the subsistence of herself and her children.

There would be just as much reason in saying that the lawmakers have a right to make the entire marriage contract; to marry any man and woman against their will; dispose of all their personal and property rights; declare them imbeciles, incapable of making a reasonable marriage contract; then presume the consent of both the parties; and finally treat them as criminals, and their children as outcasts, if they presume to make any contract of their own.

This same trick, of holding that the law is a part of the contract, has been made to protect the private property of stockholders from liability for the debts of the corporations, of which they were members; and to protect the private property of special partners, so-called, or limited partners, from liability for partnership debts.

This same trick has been employed to justify insolvent and bankrupt laws, so-called, whereby a first creditor's right to a first mortgage on the property of his debtor, has been taken from him, and he has been compelled to take his chances with as many subsequent creditors as the debtor may succeed in becoming indebted to

All these absurdities and atrocities have been practiced by the lawmakers of the States, and sustained by the courts, under the pretence that they (the courts) did not know what the natural "obligation of contracts" was; or that, if they did know what it was, the const.i.tution of the United States imposed no restraint upon its unlimited violation by the State lawmakers.

SECTION XX.

But, not content with having always sanctioned the unlimited power of the _State_ lawmakers to abolish all men's natural right to make their own contracts, the Supreme Court of the United States has, within the last twenty years, taken pains to a.s.sert that congress also has the arbitrary power to abolish the same right.

1. It has a.s.serted the arbitrary power of congress to abolish all men's right to make their own contracts, by a.s.serting its power _to alter the meaning of all contracts, after they are made_, so as to make them widely, or wholly, different from what the parties had made them.

Thus the court has said that, after a man has made a contract to pay a certain number of dollars, at a future time,--_meaning such dollars as were current at the time the contract was made_,--congress has power to coin a dollar of less value than the one agreed on, and authorize the debtor to pay his debt with a dollar of less value than the one he had promised.

To cover up this infamous crime, the court a.s.serts, over and over again,--what no one denies,--that congress has power (const.i.tutionally speaking) to alter, at pleasure, the value of its coins. But it then a.s.serts that congress has this additional, and wholly different, power, to wit, the power to declare that this alteration in the value of the coins _shall work a corresponding change in all existing contracts for the payment of money_.

In reality they say that a contract to pay money is not a contract to pay any particular amount, or value, of such money as was known and understood by the parties at the time the contract was made, but _only such, and so much, as congress shall afterwards choose to call by that name, when the debt shall become due_.

They a.s.sert that, by simply retaining the name, while altering the thing,--_or by simply giving an old name to a new thing_,--congress has power to utterly abolish the contract which the parties themselves entered into, and subst.i.tute for it any such new and different one, as they (congress) may choose to subst.i.tute.

Here are their own words:

_The contract obligation ... was not a duty to pay gold or silver, or the kind of money recognized by law at the time when the contract was made, nor was it a duty to pay money of equal intrinsic value in the market.... But the obligation of a contract to pay money is to pay that which the law shall recognize as money when the payment is to be made.--Legal Tender Cases, 12 Wallace 548._

This is saying that the obligation of a contract to pay money is not an obligation to pay what both the law and the parties recognize as money, _at the time when the contract is made_, but only such subst.i.tute as congress shall afterwards prescribe, "_when the payment is to be made_."

This opinion was given by a majority of the court in the year 1870.

In another opinion the court says:

Under the power to coin money, and to regulate its value, congress may issue coins of same denomination [that is, bearing the same name] as those already current by law, but of less intrinsic value than those, by reason of containing a less weight of the precious metals, _and thereby enable debtors to discharge their debts by the payment of coins of the less real value_. A contract to pay a certain sum of money, without any stipulation as to the kind of money in which it shall be made, may always be satisfied by payment of that sum [that is, that _nominal_ amount] in any currency _which is lawful money at the place and time at which payment is to be made_.--_Juilliard vs.

Greenman_, 110 _U. S. Reports_, 449.

This opinion was given by the entire court--save one, Field--at the October term of 1883.

Both these opinions are distinct declarations of the power of congress to alter men's contracts, _after they are made_, by simply retaining the name, while altering the thing, that is agreed to be paid.

In both these cases, the court means distinctly to say that, _after the parties to a contract have agreed upon the number of dollars to be paid_, congress has power to reduce the value of the dollar, and authorize all debtors to pay the less valuable dollar, instead of the one agreed on.

In other words, the court means to say that, after a contract has been made for the payment of a certain number of dollars, _congress has power to alter the meaning of the word dollar_, and thus authorize the debtor to pay in something different from, and less valuable than, the thing he agreed to pay.

Well, if congress has power to alter men's contracts, _after they are made_, by altering the meaning of the word dollar, and thus reducing the value of the debt, it has a precisely equal power to _increase_ the value of the dollar, and thus compel the debtor to pay _more_ than he agreed to pay.

Congress has evidently just as much right to _increase_ the value of the dollar, after a contract has been made, as it has to _reduce_ its value.

It has, therefore, just as much right to cheat debtors, by compelling them to pay _more_ than they agreed to pay, as it has to cheat creditors, by compelling them to accept _less_ than they agreed to accept.

All this talk of the court is equivalent to a.s.serting that congress has the right to alter men's contracts at pleasure, _after they are made_, and make them over into something, or anything, wholly different from what the parties themselves had made them.

And this is equivalent to denying all men's right to make their own contracts, or to acquire any contract rights, which congress may not _afterward_, at pleasure, alter, or abolish.

It is equivalent to saying that the words of contracts are not to be taken in the sense in which they are used, by the parties themselves, at the time when the contracts are entered into, but only in such different senses as congress may choose to put upon them at any future time.

If this is not a.s.serting the right of congress to abolish altogether men's natural right to make their own contracts, what is it?

Incredible as such audacious villainy may seem to those unsophisticated persons, who imagine that a court of law should be a court of justice, it is nevertheless true, that this court intended to declare the unlimited power of congress to alter, at pleasure, the contracts of parties, _after they have been made_, by altering the kind and amount of money by which the contracts may be fulfilled. That they intended all this, is proved, not only by the extracts already given from their opinions, but also by the whole tenor of their arguments--too long to be repeated here--and more explicitly by these quotations, _viz._:

There is no well-founded distinction to be made between the const.i.tutional validity of an act of congress declaring treasury notes a legal tender for the payment of debts contracted after its pa.s.sage, and that of an act making them a legal tender for the discharge of _all_ debts, _as well those incurred before, as those made after, its enactment_.--_Legal Tender Cases_, 12 _Wallace_ 530 (1870).

Every contract for the payment of money, simply, is necessarily subject to the const.i.tutional power of the government over the currency, whatever that power may be, _and the obligation of the parties is, therefore, a.s.sumed with reference to that power_.--12 _Wallace_ 549.

Contracts for the payment of money are subject to the authority of congress, _at least so far as relates to the means of payment_.--12 _Wallace_ 549.

The court means here to say that "every contract for the payment of money, simply," is necessarily made, by the parties, _subject to the power of congress to alter it afterward_--by altering the kind and value of the money with which it may be paid--_into anything, into which_ they (congress) _may choose to alter it_.

And this is equivalent to saying that all such contracts are made, by the parties, with _the implied understanding that the contracts, as written and signed by themselves, do not bind either of the parties to anything_; but that they simply suggest, or initiate, some non-descript or other, which congress may afterward convert into a binding contract, _of such a sort, and only such a sort, as_ they (congress) _may see fit to convert it into_.

Every one of these judges knew that no two men, having common honesty and common sense,--unless first deprived of all power to make their own contracts,--would ever enter into a contract to pay money, with any understanding that the government had any such arbitrary power as the court here ascribes to it, to alter their contract after it should be made. Such an absurd contract would, in reality, be no _legal_ contract at all. It would be a mere gambling agreement, having, naturally and really, no _legal_ "obligation" at all.

But further. A _solvent_ contract to pay money is in reality--in law, and in equity--_a bona fide mortgage upon the debtor's property_. And this mortgage right is as veritable a right of property, as is any right of property, that is conveyed by a warranty deed. And congress has no more right to invalidate this mortgage, by a single iota, than it has to invalidate a warranty deed of land. And these judges will sometime find out that such is "the obligation of contracts," if they ever find out what "the obligation of contracts" is.

The justices of that court have had this question--what is "the obligation of contracts"?--before them for seventy years, and more. But they have never agreed among themselves--even by so many as a majority--as to what it is. And this disagreement is very good evidence that _none_ of them have known what it is; for if any one of them had known what it is, he would doubtless have been able, long ago, to enlighten the rest.

Considering the vital importance of men's contracts, it would evidently be more to the credit of these judges, if they would give their attention to this question of "the obligation of contracts," until they shall have solved it, than it is to be telling fifty millions of people that they have no right to make any contracts at all, except such as congress has power to invalidate after they shall have been made. Such a.s.sertions as this, coming from a court that cannot even tell us what "the obligation of contracts" is, are not ent.i.tled to any serious consideration. On the contrary, they show us what farces and impostures these judicial opinions--or decisions, as they call them--are. They show that these judicial oracles, as men call them, are no better than some of the other so-called oracles, by whom mankind have been duped.

But these judges certainly never will find out what "the obligation of contracts" is, until they find out that men have the natural right to make their own contracts, and unalterably fix their "obligation"; and that governments can have no power whatever to make, unmake, alter, or invalidate that "obligation."

Still further. Congress has the same power over weights and measures that it has over coins. And the court has no more right or reason to say that congress has power to alter existing contracts, by altering the value of the coins, than it has to say that, after any or all men have, for value received, entered into contracts to deliver so many bushels of wheat or other grain, so many pounds of beef, pork, b.u.t.ter, cheese, cotton, wool, or iron, so many yards of cloth, or so many feet of lumber, congress has power, by altering these weights and measures, to alter all these existing contracts, so as to convert them into contracts to deliver only half as many, or to deliver twice as many, bushels, pounds, yards, or feet, as the parties agreed upon.