Monopolies and the People Part 14

It is plain that a currency so supported cannot depreciate more than the loans; in other words, below the general credit of the country. It will rise or fall with it. At the present moment, if the notes were received for five per cent bonds, they would be at par. In other words, specie payments would be resumed.

Now, does making the notes a legal tender increase their value? It is said that it does, by giving them a new use. The best political economists say that it does not. When the government compels the people to receive its notes, it virtually declares that it does not expect them to be received without compulsion. It practically represents itself insolvent. This certainly does not improve the value of its notes. It is an element of depreciation. In addition, it creates a powerful interest in the debtor cla.s.s and in the purchasers of bonds to depress to the lowest point the credit of the notes. The cheaper these become, the easier the payment of debts, and the more profitable the investments in bonds bearing coin interest.

On the other hand, the higher prices become, for everything the government needs to buy, and the greater the acc.u.mulation of public as well as private debt. It is true that such a state of things is acceptable to debtors, investors in bonds, and speculators. It is their opportunity of relief or wealth. And many are persuaded by their representations that the forced circulation is not only a necessity but a benefit. But the apparent benefit is a delusion and the necessity imaginary. In their legitimate use, the notes are hurt not helped by being made a legal tender. The legal tender quality is only valuable for the purposes of dishonesty. Every honest purpose is answered as well and better without it.

We have no hesitation, therefor, in declaring our conviction that the making of these notes a legal tender was not a necessary or proper means to the carrying on war or to the exercise of any express power of the government.

But the absence of necessity is not our only, or our weightiest objection to this legal tender clause. We still think, notwithstanding the argument adduced to the contrary, that it does violate an express provision of the const.i.tution, and the spirit, if not the letter, of the whole instrument. It cannot be maintained that legislation justly obnoxious to such objections can be maintained as the exercise of an implied power. There can be no implication against the const.i.tution.

Legislation to be warranted as the exercise of implied powers must not be "prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of the const.i.tution."

The fifth amendment provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without compensation or due process of law. The opinion of the former minority says that the argument against the validity of the legal tender clause, founded on this const.i.tutional provision, is "too vague for their perception." It says that a "declaration of war would be thus unconst.i.tutional," because it might depreciate the value of property; and "the abolition of tariff on sugar, or iron," because it might destroy the capital employed in those manufactures; and "the successive issues of government bonds," because they might make those already in private hands less valuable. But it seems to have escaped the attention of the then minority that to declare war, to lay and repeal taxes, and to borrow money, are all express powers, and that the then majority were opposing the prohibition of the const.i.tution to the claim of an implied power. Besides, what resemblance is there between the effect of the exercise of these express powers and the operation of the legal tender clause upon pre-existing debts? The former are indirect effects of the exercise of undisputed powers. The latter acts directly upon the relations of debtor and creditor. It violates that fundamental principle of all just legislation that the legislature shall not take the property of A and give it to B. It says that B, who has purchased a farm of A for a certain price, may keep the farm without paying for it, if he will only tender certain notes which may bear some proportion to the price, or be even worthless. It seems to us that this is a manifest violation of this clause of the const.i.tution.

We think also that it is inconsistent with the spirit of the const.i.tution in that it impairs the obligation of contracts. In the opinion of the then minority it is frankly said: "Undoubtedly it is a law impairing the obligation of contracts made before its pa.s.sage," but it is immediately added: "While the const.i.tution forbids the states to pa.s.s such laws, it does not forbid congress," and this opinion, as well as the opinion just read, refers to the express authority to establish a uniform system of bankruptcy as a proof that it was not the intention of the const.i.tution to withhold that power. It is true that the const.i.tution grants authority to pa.s.s a bankrupt law, but our inference is, that in this way only can congress discharge the obligation of contracts. It may provide for ascertaining the inability of debtors to perform their contracts, and, upon the surrender of all their property may provide for their discharge. But this is a very different thing from providing that they may satisfy contracts without payment, without pretence of inability, and without any judicial proceeding.

That congress possesses the general power to impair the obligation of contracts is a proposition which, to use the language of Chief Justice Marshall, "must find its vindication in a train of reasoning not often heard in courts of justice." "It may well be added," said the same great judge, "whether the nature of society and of government does not prescribe some limits to legislative power; and, if any be prescribed, where they are to be found, if the property of an individual, fairly and honestly acquired, can be seized without compensation? To the legislature all legislative power is granted, but the question whether the act of transferring the property of an individual to the public is in the nature of a legislative power is well worthy of serious reflection."

And if the property of an individual cannot be transferred to the public, how much less to another individual?

These remarks of Chief Justice Marshall were made in a case in which it became necessary to determine whether a certain act of the legislature of Georgia was within the const.i.tutional prohibition against impairing the obligation of contracts. And they a.s.sert fundamental principles of society and government in which that prohibition had its origin. They apply with great force to the construction of the const.i.tution of the United States. In like manner and spirit Mr. Justice Chase had previously declared that "an act of the legislature contrary to the great first principles of the social compact cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority." Among such acts he instances "a law that destroys or impairs the lawful private contracts of citizens." Can we be mistaken in saying that such a law is contrary to the spirit of a const.i.tution ordained to establish justice? Can we be mistaken in thinking that if Marshall and Story were here to p.r.o.nounce judgment in this case they would declare the legal tender clause now in question to be prohibited by and inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the const.i.tution?

It is unnecessary to say that we reject wholly the doctrine, advanced for the first time, we believe, in this court, by the present majority, that the legislature has any "powers under the const.i.tution which grow out of the aggregate of powers conferred upon the government, or out of the sovereignty inst.i.tuted by it." If this proposition be admitted, and it be also admitted that the legislature is the sole judge of the necessity for the exercise of such powers, the government becomes practically absolute and unlimited.

Our observations thus far have been directed to the question of the const.i.tutionality of the legal tender clause and its operation upon contracts made before the pa.s.sage of the law. We shall now consider whether it be const.i.tutional in its application to contracts made after its pa.s.sage. In other words, whether congress has power to make anything but coin a legal tender.

And here it is well enough again to say that we do not question the authority to issue notes or to fit them for a circulating medium, or to promote their circulation by providing for their receipt in payment of debts to the government, and for redemption either in coin or in bonds; in short, to adapt them to use as currency. Nor do we question the lawfulness of contracts stipulating for payment in such notes, or the propriety of enforcing the performance of such contracts by holding the tender of such currency, according to their terms, sufficient. The question is, Has congress power to make the notes of the government, redeemable or irredeemable, a legal tender without contract and against the will of the person to whom they are tendered? In considering this question we a.s.sume as a fundamental proposition that it is the duty of every government to establish a standard of value. The necessity of such a standard is indeed universally acknowledged. Without it the transactions of society would become impossible. All measures, whether of extent, or weight, or value, must have certain proportions of that which they are intended to measure. The unit of extent must have certain definite length, the unit of weight certain definite gravity, and the unit of value certain definite value. These units, multiplied or subdivided, supply the standards by which all measures are properly made. The selection, therefore, by the common consent of all nations, of gold and silver as the standard of value was natural, or, more correctly speaking, inevitable. For whatever definitions of value political economists may have given, they all agree that gold and silver have more value in proportion to weight and size, and are less subject to loss by wear or abrasion than any other material capable of easy subdivision and impression, and that their value changes less and by slower degrees, through considerable periods of time, than that of any other substance which could be used for the same purpose. And these are qualities indispensable to the convenient use of the standard required.

In the construction of the const.i.tutional grant of power to establish a standard of value, _every presumption_ is, therefore, against that which would authorize the adoption of any other materials than those sanctioned by universal consent.

But the terms of the only express grant in the const.i.tution of power to establish such a standard leave little room for presumptions. The power conferred is the power to coin money, and these words must be understood as they were used at the time the const.i.tution was adopted. And we have been referred to no authority which at that time defined coining otherwise than as minting or stamping metals for money; or money otherwise than as metal coined for the purposes of commerce. These are the words of Johnson, whose great dictionary contains no reference to money of paper.

It is true that notes issued by banks, both in England and America, were then in circulation, and were used in exchanges, and in common speech called money, and that bills of credit, issued both by congress and by the states, had been recently in circulation under the same general name; but these notes and bills were never regarded as real money, but were always treated as its representatives only, and were described as currency. The legal tender notes themselves do not purport to be anything else than promises to pay money. They have been held to be securities, and therefore exempt from state taxation; and the idea that it was ever designed to make such notes a standard of value by the framers of the const.i.tution is wholly new. It seems to us impossible that it could have been entertained. Its a.s.sertion seems to us to ascribe folly to the framers of our fundamental law, and to contradict the most conspicuous facts in our public history.

The power to coin money was a power to determine the fineness, weight, and denominations of the metallic pieces by which values were to be measured; and we do not perceive how this meaning can be extended without doing violence to the very words of the const.i.tution by imposing on them a sense they were never intended to bear. This construction is supported by contemporaneous and all subsequent action of the legislature; by all the recorded utterances of statesmen and jurists, and the unbroken tenor of judicial opinion until a very recent period, when the excitement of the civil war led to the adoption, by many, of different views.

The sense of the convention which framed the const.i.tution is clear, from the account given by Mr. Madison of what took place when the power to emit bills of credit was stricken from the reported draft. He says distinctly that he acquiesced in the motion to strike out, because the government would not be disabled thereby from the use of public notes, so far as they would be safe and proper, while it cut off the pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender either for public or private debts. The whole discussion upon bills of credit proves, beyond all possible question, that the convention regarded the power to make notes a legal tender as absolutely excluded from the const.i.tution.

The papers of the Federalist, widely circulated, in favor of the ratification of the const.i.tution, discuss briefly the power to coin money, as a power to fabricate metallic money, without a hint that any power to fabricate money of any other description was given to congress; and the views which it promulgated may be fairly regarded as the views of those who voted for adoption.

Acting upon the same views, congress took measures for the establishment of a mint, exercising thereby the power to coin money, and has continued to exercise the same power, in the same way, until the present day. It established the dollar as the money unit, determined the quant.i.ty and quality of gold and silver of which each coin should consist, and prescribed the denominations and forms of all coins to be issued. Until recently no one in congress ever suggested that that body possessed power to make anything else a standard of value.

Statesmen who have disagreed widely on other points have agreed in the opinion that the only const.i.tutional measures of value are metallic coins, struck as regulated by the authority of congress. Mr. Webster expressed not only his opinion but the universal and settled conviction of the country when he said: "Most unquestionably there is no legal tender, and there can be no legal tender in this country, under the authority of this government or any other, but gold and silver, either the coinage of our mints or foreign coin at rates regulated by congress.

This is a const.i.tutional principle, perfectly plain and of the very highest importance. The states are prohibited from making anything but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts, and although no such express prohibition is applied to congress, _yet as congress has no power granted to it in this respect but to coin money and regulate the value of foreign coin_, it clearly has no power to subst.i.tute paper or anything else for coin as a tender in payment of debts and in discharge of contracts."

And this court, in _Gwin_ v. _Breedlove_, said: "_By the const.i.tution of the United States gold and silver coin_ made current by law _can only be tendered_ in payment of debts." And in _The United States_ v.

_Marigold_, this court, speaking of the trust and duty of maintaining a uniform and pure metallic standard of uniform value throughout the Union, said: "The power of coining money and regulating its value _was delegated to congress by the const.i.tution for the very purpose_, as a.s.signed by the framers of that instrument, _of creating and preserving the uniformity and purity of such a standard of value_."

The present majority of the court say that legal tender notes "have become the universal measure of values," and they hold that the legislation of congress, subst.i.tuting such measures for coin by making the notes a legal tender in payment, is warranted by the const.i.tution.

But if the plain sense of words, if the contemporaneous exposition of parties, if common consent in understanding, if the opinions of courts avail anything in determine the meaning of the const.i.tution, it seems impossible to doubt that the power to coin money is a power to establish a uniform standard of value, and that no other power to establish such a standard, by making notes a legal tender, is conferred upon congress by the const.i.tution.

My brothers Clifford and Field concur in these views, but in consideration of the importance of the principles involved will deliver their separate opinions. My brother Nelson also dissents.

CHAPTER III.

DISSENTING OPINION OF JUSTICE CLIFFORD.

Money, in the const.i.tutional sense, means coins of gold and silver fabricated and stamped by authority of law as a measure of value, pursuant to the power vested in congress by the const.i.tution.

Coins of copper may also be minted for small fractional circulation, as authorized by law and the usage of the government for eighty years, but it is not necessary to discuss that topic at large in this investigation.

Even the authority of congress upon the general subject does not extend beyond the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin.

Express power is also conferred upon congress to fix the standard of weights and measures, and of course that standard, as applied to future transactions, may be varied or changed to promote the public interest, but the grant of power in respect to the standard of value is expressed in more guarded language, and the grant is much more restricted.

Power to fix the standard of weights and measures is evidently a power of comparatively wide discretion, but the power to regulate the value of the money authorized by the const.i.tution to be coined is a definite and precise grant of power, admitting of very little discretion in its exercise, and is not equivalent, except to a very limited extent, to the power to fix the standard of weights and measures, as the money authorized by that clause of the const.i.tution is coined money, and as a necessary consequence must be money of actual value, fabricated from the precious metals generally used for that purpose at the period when the const.i.tution was framed.

Coined money, such as is authorized by that clause of the instrument, consists only of the coins of the United States fabricated and stamped by authority of law, and is the same money as that described in the next clause of the same section as the current coins of the United States, and is the same money also as "the gold and silver coins" described in the tenth section of the same article, which prohibits the states from coining money, emitting bills of credit, or making "anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts."

Intrinsic value exists in gold and silver, as well before as after it is fabricated and stamped as coin, which shows conclusively that the princ.i.p.al discretion vested in congress under that clause of the const.i.tution consists in the power to determine the denomination, fineness, or value and description of the coins to be struck, and the relative proportion of gold or silver, whether standard or pure, and the proportion of alloy to be used in minting the coins, and to prescribe the mode in which the intended object of the grant shall be accomplished and carried into practical effect.

Discretion, to some extent, in prescribing the value of the coins minted, is beyond doubt vested in congress, but the plain intent of the const.i.tution is that congress, in determining that matter, shall be governed chiefly by the weight and intrinsic value of the coins, as it is clear that if the stamped value of the same should much exceed the real value of gold and silver not coined, the minted coins would immediately cease to be either current coins or a standard of value as contemplated by the const.i.tution. Commercial transactions imperiously require a standard of value, and the commercial world, at a very early period in civilization, adopted gold and silver as the true standard for that purpose, and the standard originally adopted has ever since continued to be so regarded by universal consent to the present time.

Paper emissions have, at one time or another, been authorized and employed as currency by most commercial nations, and by no government, past or present, more extensively than by the United States, and yet it is safe to affirm that all experience in its use as a circulating medium has demonstrated the proposition that it cannot by any legislation, however stringent, be made a standard of value or the just equivalent of gold and silver. Attempts of the kind have always failed, and no body of men, whether in public or private stations, ever had more instructive teachings of the truth of that remark than the patriotic men who framed the federal const.i.tution, as they had seen the power to emit bills of credit freely exercised during the war of the Revolution, not only by the confederation, but also by the states, and knew from bitter experience its calamitous effects and the utter worthlessness of such a circulating medium as a standard of value. Such men so instructed could not have done otherwise than they did do, which was to provide an irrepealable standard of value, to be coined from gold and silver, leaving as little upon the subject to the discretion of congress as was consistent with a wise forecast and an invincible determination that the essential principles of the const.i.tution should be perpetual as the means to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.

a.s.sociated as the grant to coin money and regulate the value thereof is with the grant to fix the standard of weights and measures, the conclusion, when that fact is properly weighed in connection with the words of the grant, is irresistible that the purpose of the framers of the const.i.tution was to provide a permanent standard of value which should, at all times and under all circ.u.mstances, consist of coin, fabricated and stamped, from gold and silver, by authority of law, and that they intended at the same time to withhold from congress, as well as from the States, the power to subst.i.tute any other money as a standard of value in matters of finance, business, trade, or commerce.

Support to that view may also be drawn from the last words of the clause giving congress the unrestricted power to regulate the value of foreign coin, as it would be difficult if not impossible to give full effect to the standard of value prescribed by the const.i.tution, in times of fluctuation, if the circulating medium could be supplied by foreign coins not subject to any congressional regulation as to their value.

Exclusive power to regulate the alloy and value of the coin struck by their own authority, or by the authority of the states, was vested in congress under the confederation, but the congress was prohibited from enacting any regulation as to the value of the coins unless nine states a.s.sented to the proposed regulation.

Subject to the power of congress to pa.s.s such regulations it is unquestionably true that the states, under the confederation as well as the United States, possessed the power to coin money, but the const.i.tution, when it was adopted, denied to the states all authority upon the subject, and also ordained that they should not make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.

Beyond all doubt the framers of the const.i.tution intended that the money unit of the United States, for measuring values, should be one dollar, as the word dollar in the plural form is employed in the body of the const.i.tution, and also in the seventh amendment, recommended by congress at its first session after the const.i.tution was adopted. Two years before that, to-wit, July 6, 1785, the congress of the confederation enacted that the money unit of the United States should "be one dollar,"

and one year later, to-wit, August 8, 1786, they established the standard for gold and silver, and also provided that the money of account of the United States should correspond with the coins established by law.

On the 4th of March, 1789, congress first a.s.sembled under the const.i.tution, and proceeded without unnecessary delay to enact such laws as were necessary to put the government in operation which the const.i.tution had ordained and established. Ordinances had been pa.s.sed during the confederation to organize the executive departments, and for the establishment of a mint, but the new const.i.tution did not perpetuate any of those laws, and yet congress continued to legislate for a period of three years before any new law was pa.s.sed prescribing the money unit or the money of account, either for "the public offices" or for the courts. Throughout that period it must have been understood that those matters were impliedly regulated by the const.i.tution, as tariffs were enacted, tonnage duties imposed, laws pa.s.sed for the collection of duties, the several executive departments created, and the judiciary of the United States organized and empowered to exercise full jurisdiction under the const.i.tution.

Duties of tonnage and import duties were required, by the act of the 31st of July, 1789, to be paid "in gold and silver coin," and congress, in the same act, adopted comprehensive regulations as to the value of foreign coin, but no provision was made for coining money or for a standard of value, except so far as that subject is involved in the regulation as to the value of foreign coin, or for a money unit, nor was any regulation prescribed as to the money of account. Revenue for the support of the government, under those regulations, was to be derived solely from duties of tonnage and import duties, and the express provision was that those duties should be collected in gold and silver coin.

Legislation under the const.i.tution had proceeded thus far before the treasury department was created. Treasury regulations for the collection, safe-keeping, and disburs.e.m.e.nt of the public moneys became indispensable, and congress, on the 2d September, 1789, pa.s.sed the act to establish the treasury department, which has ever since remained in force. By that act, the secretary of the treasury is declared to be the head of the department, and it is made his duty, among other things, to digest and prepare plans for the improvement and management of the public finances and for the support of the public credit; to prepare and report estimates of the public revenue and of the public expenditures; to superintend the collection of the revenue; to prescribe forms of keeping and stating accounts and for making returns; to grant all warrants for moneys to be issued from the treasury, in pursuance of appropriations by law, and to perform all such services relative to the finances as he shall be directed to perform.

Moneys collected from duties of tonnage and from import duties const.i.tuted at that period the entire resources of the national treasury, and the antecedent act of congress, providing for the collection of those duties, imperatively required that all such duties should be paid in gold and silver coin, from which it follows that the moneys mentioned in the act creating the treasury department were moneys of gold and silver coin which were collected as public revenue from the duties of tonnage and import duties imposed by the before-mentioned prior acts of congress. Appropriations made by congress were understood as appropriations of moneys in the treasury, and all warrants issued by the secretary of the treasury were understood to be warrants for the payment of gold and silver coin. Forms for keeping and stating accounts, and for making returns, and for warrants for moneys to be issued from the treasury were prescribed, and in all those forms the secretary of the treasury adopted the money unit recognized in the const.i.tution, and which had been ordained four years before by the congress of the confederation.

Argument to show that the national treasury was organized on the basis that the gold and silver coins of the United States were to be the standard of value is unnecessary, as it is a historical fact which no man or body of men can ever successfully contradict. Public attention had been directed to the necessity of establishing a mint for the coinage of gold and silver, several years before the convention met to frame the const.i.tution, and a committee was appointed by the congress of the confederation to consider and report upon the subject. They reported on the 21st February, 1782, more than a year before the treaty of peace, in favor of creating such an establishment, and on the 16th of October, 1786, the congress adopted an ordinance providing that a mint should be established for the coinage of gold, silver, and copper, agreeable to the resolves of congress previously mentioned, which prescribed the standard of gold and silver, and recognized the money unit established by the resolves pa.s.sed in the preceding year.

Congressional legislation organizing the new government had now progressed to the point where it became necessary to re-examine that subject and to make provision for the exercise of the power to coin money, as authorized by the const.i.tution. Pursuant to that power, congress, on April 2d, 1792, pa.s.sed the act establishing a mint for the purpose of a national coinage, and made provisions, among other things, that coins of gold and silver, of certain fineness and weight, and of certain denominations, value, and descriptions, should be from time to time struck and coined at the said mint. Specific provision is there made for coining gold and silver coins, as follows: First, gold coins, to-wit: Eagles of the value of ten dollars or units; half-eagles of the value of five dollars; quarter-eagles of the value of two and a half dollars, the act specifying in each case the number of grains and fractions of a grain the coin shall contain, whether fabricated from pure or standard gold. Second, silver coins, to-wit; "DOLLARS OR UNITS,"