OF VALUE, IS ESTABLISHED AND CANNOT BE OVERTHROWN.' Beyond peradventure he was of the opinion that gold and silver, at rates fixed by Congress, constituted the legal standard of value, and that neither Congress nor the states had authority to establish any other standard in its place.-(4 Ibid., 280.) Views equally decisive have been expressed by this court in a case where the remarks were pertinent to the question presented for decision. (U. S. vs. MARIGOLD, 9 Howard, 567.) Certain questions were certified here which arose in the circuit court in the trial of an indictment in which the defendant was charged with having brought into the United States from a foreign place, with intent to pass, utter, publish, and sell certain false, forged, and counterfeit coins, made, forged, and counterfeited in the resemblance and similitude of the coins struck at the mint. Doubts were raised at the trial whether Congress had the power to pass the law on which the indictment was found. Objection was made that the acts charged were only a fraud in traffic, and, as such, were punishable, if at all, under the state law. Responsive to that suggestion the court say that the provisions of the section "appertain rather to the execution of an important trust invested by the Constitution, and to the obligation to fulfill that trust on the part of the government, namely, the trust and the duty of creating and maintaining a uniform and pure metallic standard of value throughout the Union; that the power of coining money and of regulationg its value was delegated to Congress by the Constitution for the very purpose of creating and preserving the uniformity and purity of such a standard of value, and on account of the impossibility which was foreseen of otherwise preventing the inequalities and the confusion necessarily incident to different views of policy which in different communities would be brought to bear on this subject. The power to coin money being thus given to Congress, founded on public necessity, it must carry with it the correlative power of protracting the creature and object of that power." Appropriate suggestions follow as to the right of the government to adopt measures to exclude counterfeits and prevent the true coin from being substituted by others of no intrinsic value, and the justice delivering the opinion then proceeds to say, that Congress "having emitted a circulating medium, a standard of value indispensable for the purposes of the community and for the action of the government itself, the Congress is accordingly authorized and bound in duty to prevent its debasement and expulsion and the destruction of the general confidence and convenience by the influx and substitution of a spurious coin in lieu of the constitutional currency." Equally decisive views were expressed by the court six years earlier, in the case of GWIN vs. Breedlove, (2 Howard, 38,) in which the opinion of the court was delivered by the late Mr. Justice CATRON, than whom no justice who ever sat in the court was more opposed to the expression of an opinion on a point not involved in the record. No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts. These prohibitions, said Mr. Justice WASHINGTON, associated with the powers granted to Congress to coin money and regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin, most obviously constitute members of the same family, being upon the same subject and governed by the same policy. This policy, said the learned justice, was to provide a fixed and uniform standard of value throughout the United States by which the commercial and other dealings between the citizens thereof, or between them and foreigners, as well as the moneyed transactions of the government, should be regulated.—(Ogden vs. SauNDERS, 12 Wheaton, 265.) Language so well chosen and so explicit cannot be misunderstood, and the views expressed by Mr. Justice JOHNSON in the same case are even more decisive. He said the prohibition in the Constitution to make anything but gold or silver coin a tender in payment of debts is express and universal. The framers of the Constitution regarded it as an evil to be repelled without modification, and that they have therefore left nothing to be inferred or deduced from construction on the subject.-(12 Ibid., 288.) Recorded as those opinions have been for forty-five years, and never questioned, they are certaiuly entitled to much weight, especially as the principles which are there laid down were subsequently affirmed in two cases by the unanimous opinion of this court.(UNITED STATES vs. MARIGOLD, 9 Howard, 567. GWIN vs. BreedLOVE, 2 Howard, 38. CRAIG vs. MISSOURI, 4 Peters, 434.) Strong support to the view here taken is also derived from the case last cited, in which the opinion was given by the Chief Justice. Loan certificates issued by the state were the consideration of the note in suit in that case, and the defence was that the certificates were bills of credit and that the consideration of the note was illegal. Responsive to that defence the plaintiff insisted that the certificates were not bills of credit, because they had not been made a legal tender, to which the court replied, that the emission of bills of credit and the enactment of tender laws were distinct operations, independent of each other; that both were forbidden by the Constitution; that the evils of paper money did not result solely from the quality of its being made a tender in payment of debts; that that quality might be the most pernicious one, but that it was not an essential quality of bills of credit nor the only mischief resulting from such emissions.(BRISCOE VS. BANK OF KENTUCKY, 11 Peters, 317. Fox vs. OHIO, 5 Howard, 433.) Remarks of the Chief Justice in the case of STURGES vs. CROWNINSHIELD, (4 Wheaton, 204,) may also be referred to as even more explicit and decisive to the same conclusion than anything embodied in the other cases. He first describes, in vivid colors, the general distress which followed the war in which our independence was established. Paper money, he said, was issued, worthless lands and other property of no use to the creditor were made a tender in payment of debts, and and the time of payment stipulated in the contract was extended by law. Mischief to such an extent was done, and so much more was apprehended, that general distrust prevailed and all confidence between man and man was destroyed. Special reference was made to those grievances by the Chief Justice because it was insisted that the prohibition to pass laws impairing the obligation of contracts ought to be confined by the court to matters of that description, but the court was of a different opinion, and held that the convention intended to establish a great principle, that contracts should be inviolable, that the provision was intended "to prohibit the use of any means by which the same mischief might be produced." He admitted that that provision was not intended to prevent the issue of paper money, as that evil was remedied and the practice prohibited by the clause forbidding the states to "emit bills of credit," inserted in the Constitution expressly for that purpose, and he also admitted that the prohibition to emit bills of credit was not intended to restrain the states from enabling debtors to discharge their debts by the tender of property of no real value to the creditor, "because for that subject also particular provision is made" in the Constitution; but he added, "NOTHING BUT GOLD AND SILVER COIN CAN BE MADE A TENDER IN PAYMENT OF DEBTS,”—(STURGES vs. CROWNINSHIELD, 4 Ibid., 205.) Utterances of the kind are found throughout the reported decisions of this court, but there is not a sentence or word to be found within those volumes, from the organization of the court to the passage of the acts of Congress in question, to support the opposite theory. Power, as before remarked, was vested in the Congress under the Confederation to borrow money and emit bills of credit, and history shows that the power to emit such bills had been exercised, before the convention which framed the Constitution assembled, to an amount exceeding three hundred and fifty millions of dollars.-(2 Story on Constitution, 3d ed., 249. BRISCOE VS. BANK OF KENTUCKY, 11 Peters, 337. 1 Jefferson's Correspondence, 401. Am. Almanac, 1830, 183.) Still the draft of the Constitution, as reported, contained the words "and to emit bills" appended to the clause authorizing Congress to borrow money. When that clause was reached, says Mr. MARTIN, a motion was made to strike out the words "to emit bills of credit;' and his account of what followed affords the most persuasive and convincing evidence that the convention, and nearly every member of it, intended to put an end to the exercise of such a power. Against the motion, he says, we urged that it would be improper to deprive the Congress of that power; that it would be a novelty unprecedented to establish a government which should not have such authority; that it was impossible to look forward into futurity so far as to decide that events might not happen that would render the exercise of such a power absolutely necessary, &c. But a majority of the convention, he said, being wise beyond every event, and being willing to risk any political evil rather than admit the idea of a paper emission in any possible case, refused to trust the authority to a government to which they were lavishing the most unlimited powers of taxation, and to the mercy of which they were willing blindly to trust the liberty and property of the citizens of every State in the Union, and " they erased that clause from the system."—(1 Elliott's Debates, 369.) More forcible vindication of the action of the convention could hardly be made than is expressed, in the language of the Federalist, and the authority of Judge STORY warrants the statement that the language there employed is "justified by almost every contemporary writer," and is "attested in its truth by facts" beyond the influence of every attempt at contradiction. Having adverted to those facts the commentator proceeds to say, "that the same reasons which show the necessity of denying to the states the power of regulating coin, prove with equal force that they ought not to be at liberty to substitute a paper medium instead of coin.”—(Federalist, No. 44.) Emissions of the kind were not declared by the Continental Congress to be a legal tender, but Congress passed a resolution declaring that they ought to be a tender in payment of all private and public debts, and that a refusal to receive a tender ought to be an extinguishment of the debt, and recommended the states to pass such laws. They even went further and declared that whoever should refuse to receive the paper as gold or silver should be deemed an enemy to the public liberty, but our commentator says that these measures of violence and terror so far from aiding the circulation of the paper led on to still further depreciation.-(2 Journal Congress, 21. 3 Ibid., 20. 2 Pitkin's History, 155, 6.) New emissions followed and new measures were adopted to give the paper credit by pledging the public faith for its redemption. Effort followed effort in that direction until the idea of redemption at par was abandoned. Forty for one was offered, and the states were required to report the bills under that regulation, but few of the old bills were ever reported, and of course few only of the contemplated new notes were issued, and the bills in a brief period ceased to circulate, and in the course of that year quietly died in the hands of their possessors.-(2 Story on Constitution, 3d ed., secs. 1359, 1360. 2 Pitkin's History, 157. 1 Jefferson's Correspondence, 402.) Bills of credit were made a tender by the states, but all such, as well as those issued by the Congress, were dead in the hands of their possessors before the convention assembled to frame the Constitution. Intelligent and impartial belief in the theory that such men, so instructed, in framing a government for their posterity as well as for themselves, would deliberately vest such a power, either in Congress or the states, as a part of their perpetual system, can never in my judgment be secured in the face of the recorded evidences to the contrary which the political and judicial history of our country affords. Such evidence, so persuasive and convincing as it is, must ultimately bring all to the conclusion that neither the Congress nor the states can make anything but gold or silver coin a tender in payment of debts. Exclusive power to coin money is certainly vested in Congress, but no amount of reasoning can show that executing a promissory note and ordering it to be taken in payment of public and private debts is a species of coining money."-(Pomeroy on Constitution, sec. 409.) Complete refutation of such theory is also found in the dissenting opinion in the former case, in which the justice who delivered the opinion states that he is not able to deduce the power to pass the laws in question from that clause of the Constitution, and in which he admits, without qualification, that the provision making such notes a legal tender does undoubtedly impair the "obligation of contracts made before its passage." Extended argument, therefore, to show that the acts in question impair the obligation of contracts made before their passage is unnecessary, but the admission stops short of the whole truth, as it leaves the implication to be drawn that the obligation of subsequent contracts is not impaired by such legislation. Contracts for the payment of money, whether made before or after the passage of such a provision, are contracts, if the promise is expressed in dollars, to pay the specified amount in the money recognized and established by the Constitution as the standard of value, and any act of Congress which in theory compels the creditor to accept paper emissions, instead of the money so recognized and established, impairs the obligation of such a contract, no matter whether the contract was made before or after the act compelling the creditor to accept such payment, as the Constitution in that respect is a part of the contract, and by its terms entitles the creditor to demand payment in the medium which the Constitution recognizes and establishes as the standard of value. Evidently the word dollar, as employed in the Constitution, means the money recognized and established in the express power vested in Congress to coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin, the framers of the Constitution having borrowed and adopted the word as used by the Continental Congress in the ordinance of the sixth of July, 1785, and of the eighth of August, 1786, in which it was enacted that the money unit of the United States should be one dollar," and that the money of account should be dollars and fractions of dollars, as subsequently provided in the ordinance establishing a mint.-(10 Journals of Congress, 225. 11 Ibid., 179.) 66 Repeated decisions of this court, of recent date, have established the rule that contracts to pay coined dollars can only be satisfied by the payment of such money, which is precisely equivalent to a decision that such notes as those described in the acts of Congress in question are not the money recognized and established by the Constitution as the standard of value, as the money so recognized and established, if the contract is expressed in dollars, will satisfy any and every contract between party and party.-(BRONSON vs. RODES, 7 Wallace, 248. BUTLER VS. HORWITZ, 7 Wallace, 259. BANK vs. SUPERVISORS, 7 Wallace, 28.) Beyond all question those cases recognize "the fact, accepted by all men throughout the world, that value is inherent in the precious metals; that gold and silver are in themselves values, and being such, |