ple as well as it is understood in our day. They had seen in the experience of the revolutionary period the demoralizing tendency, the cruel injustice and the intolerable oppression of a paper currency not convertible on demand into money, and forced into circulation by legal-tender provisions and penal enactments. When they therefore were constructing a government for a country, which they could not fail to see was destined to be a mighty empire, and have commercial relations with all nations; a government which they believed was to endure for ages, they determined to recognize in the fundamental law as the standard of value, that which ever has been and always must be recognized by the world as the true standard, and thus facilitate commerce, protect industry, establish justice, and prevent the possibility of a recurrence of the evils which they had experienced and the perpetration of the injustice which they had witnessed. "We all know," says Mr. WEBSTER, "that the establishment of a sound and uniform currency was one of the greatest ends contemplated in the adoption of the present Constitution. If we could now fully explore all the motives of those who framed, and those who supported that Constitution, perhaps we should hardly find a more powerful one than this."—(Webster's Works, Vol. 3, p. 395.)

And how the framers of the Constitution endeavored to establish this "sound and uniform currency we have already seen in the clauses which they adopted providing for a currency of gold and silver coins. Their determination to sanction only a metallic currency is further evident from the debates in the convention upon the proposition to authorize Congress to emit bills on the credit of the United States. By bills of credit, as the terms were then understood, were meant paper issues, intending to circulate through the community for its ordinary purposes as money, bearing upon their face the promise of the government to pay the sums specified thereon at a future day. The original draft contained a clause giving to Congress power "to borrow money and emit bills on the credit of the United States," and when the clause came up for consideration, Mr. MORRIS moved to strike out the words "and emit bills on the credit of the United States," observing that "if the United States had credit such bills would be unnecessary; if they had not, unjust and useless." Mr. MADISON inquired whether it would not be "sufficient to prohibit the making them a legal tender." "This will remove, he said, "the temptation to emit them with unjust views, and promissory notes in that shape may in some emergencies be best." Mr. MORRIS replied that striking out the words would still leave room for "notes of a responsible minister," which would do “all the good without the mischief." Mr. GORHAM was for striking out the words without inserting any prohibition. If the words stood, he said, they might "suggest and lead to the measure," and that the power, so far as it was necessary or safe, was "involved in that of borrowing." Mr. MASON said he was unwilling "to tie the hands of Congress," and thought Congress "would not have the power unless it were expressed." Mr. ELLSWORTH thought it "a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money." "The mis

chiefs," he said, "of the various experiments which had been made were now fresh in the public mind, and had excited the disgust of all the respectable part of America. By withholding the power from the new government, more friends of influence would be gained to it than by almost anything else. Paper money can in no case be necessary. Give the government credit, and other resources will offer. The power may do harm, never good." Mr. WILSON thought that "it would have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States to remove the possibility of paper money." "This expedient," he said, 66 can never succeed whilst its mischiefs are remembered, and as long as it can be resorted to it will be a bar to other resources." Mr. BUTLER was urgent for disarming the government of such a power, and remarked "that paper was a legal tender in no country in Europe." Mr. MASON replied that if there was no example in Europe there was none in which the government was restrained on this head, and he was averse 66 to tying up the hands of the legislature altogether." Mr. LANGDON preferred to reject the whole plan than retain the words.

Of those who participated in the debates only one, Mr. MERCER, expressed an opinion favorable to paper money, and none suggested that if Congress were allowed to issue the bills their acceptance should be compulsory-that is, that they should be made a legal tender. But the words were stricken out by a vote of nine states to two. Virginia voted for the motion, and Mr. MADISON has appended a note to the debates, stating that her vote was occasioned by his acquiescence, and that he "became satisfied that striking out the words would not disable the government from the use of public notes, as far as they could be safe and proper; and would only cut off the pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender either for public or private debts."—(Madison's Papers, vol. 3, p. 1346.

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If anything is manifest from these debates it is that the members of the convention intended to withhold from Congress the power issue bills to circulate as money,—that is, to be receivable in compulsory payment, or in other words having the quality of legal tender,and that the express power to issue the bills was denied, under an apprehension that if granted it would give a pretext to Congress, under the idea of declaring their effect, to annex to them that quality. The issue of notes simply as a means of borrowing money, which of course would leave them to be received at the option of parties, does not appear to have been seriously questioned. The circulation of notes thus issued as a voluntary currency and their receipt in that character in payment of taxes, duties, and other public expenses, was not subject to the objections urged.

I am aware of the rule that the opinions and intentions of individual members of the convention, as expressed in its debates and proceedings, are not to control the construction of the plain language of the Constitution or narrow down the powers which that instrument confers. Members, it is said, who did not participate in the debate may have entertained different views from those expressed. The sev

eral State conventions to which the Constitution was submitted may have differed widely from each other and from its framers in their interpretation of its clauses. We all know that opposite opinions on many points were expressed in the conventions, and conflicting reasons were urged both for the adoption and the rejection of that instrument. All this is very true, but it does not apply in the present case, for on the subject now under consideration there was everywhere, in the several State conventions and in the discussions before the people, an entire uniformity of opinion, so far as we have any record of its expression, and that concurred with the intention of the convention, as disclosed by its debates, that the Constitution withheld from Congress all power to issue bills to circulate as money, meaning by that bills made receivable in compulsory payment, or, in other words, having the quality of legal tender. Every one appears to have understood that the power of making paper issues a legal tender, by Congress or by the States, was absolutely and forever prohibited.

Mr. LUTHER MARTIN, a member of the convention, in his speech before the MARYLAND legislature, as reported in his letter to that body, states the arguments urged against depriving Congress of the power to emit bills of credit, and then says that a "majority of the convention, 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 this 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."

Not only was this construction given to the Constitution by its framers and the people in their discussions at the time it was pending before them, but until the passage of the act of 1862, a period of nearly three-quarters of a century, the soundness of this construction was never called in question by any legislation of Congress or the opinion of any judicial tribunal. Numerous acts, as already stated, were passed during this period, authorizing the issue of notes for the purpose of raising funds or obtaining supplies, but in none of them was the acceptance of the notes made compulsory. Only one instance have I been able to find in the history of congressional proceedings where it was even suggested that it was within the competency of Congress to annex to the notes the quality of legal tender, and this occurred in 1814. The government was then greatly embarrassed from the want of funds to continue the war existing with Great Britain, and a member from Georgia introduced into the House of Representatives several resolutions directing an inquiry into the expedi ency of authorizing the treasury to issue notes convenient for circulation and making provision for the purchase of supplies in each State. Among the resolutions was one declaring that the notes to be issued should be a legal tender for debts due or subsequently becoming due between citizens of the United States and between citizens and foreigners. The House agreed to consider all the resolutions but the one containing the legal-tender provision. That it refused to con

sider by a vote of more than two to one.—(Benton's Abridgment, vol. 5, p. 361.)

As until the act of 1862 there was no legislation making the acceptance of notes issued on the credit of the United States compulsory, the construction of the clause of the Constitution, containing the grant of the coinage power never came directly before this court for construction, and the attention of the court was only incidentally drawn to it. But whenever the court spoke on the subject, even incidentally, its voice was in entire harmony with that of the con

vention.

Thus, in GWIN vs. BREEDLOVE (2 Howard, 38), where a marshal of Mississippi, commanded to collect a certain amount of dollars on execution, received the amount in bank notes, it was held that he was liable to the plaintiff in gold and silver. "By the Constitution of the United States," said the court, "gold or silver coin made current by law can only be tendered in payment of debts.'

And in the case of the UNITED STATES vs. MARIGOLD (9 Howard, 567), where the question arose whether Congress had power to enact certain provisions of law for the punishment of persons bringing into the United States counterfeit coin with intent to pass it, the court said: These provisions "appertain 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. The power of coining money and of regulating its value was delegated to Congress by the Constitution for the very purpose, as assigned by the framers of that instrument, 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 protecting the creature and object of that power."

It is difficult to perceive how the trust and duty here designated, of "creating and maintaining a uniform and metallic standard of value throughout the Union," is discharged, when another standard of lower value and fluctuating character is authorized by law, which necessarily operates to drive the first from circulation.

In addition to all the weight of opinion I have mentioned we have, to the same purport, from the adoption of the Constitution up to the passage of the act of 1862, the united testimony of the leading statesmen and jurists of the country. Of all the men who, during that period, participated with any distinction in the councils of the nation, not one can be named who ever asserted any different power in Congress than what I have mentioned. As observed by the Chief Justice, statesmen who disagreed widely on other points agreed on this.

Mr WEBSTER, who has always been regarded by a large portion of his countrymen as one of the ablest and most enlightened expounders of the Constitution, did not seem to think there was any doubt on the subject, although he belonged to the class who advocated the largest exercise of powers by the general government. From his first entrance into public life, in 1812, he gave great consideration to the subject of the currency, and in an elaborate speech in the Senate, in 1836, he said: "Currency, in a large and perhaps just sense, includes not only gold and silver and bank bills, but bills of exchange also. It may include all that adjusts exchanges and settles balances in the operations of trade and business; but if we understand by currency the legal money of the country, and that which constitutes a lawful tender for debts, and is the statute measure of value, then undoubtedly nothing is included but gold and silver. 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 own mints or foreign coins, at rates regulated by Congress. This is a constitutional principle perfectly plain, and of the very highest importance. The states are expressly 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 to regulate the value of foreign coins, it clearly has no power to substitute paper, or anything else, for coin as a tender in payment of debts and in discharge of contracts. Congress has exercised this power fully in both its branches. It has coined money, and still coins it; it has regulated the value of foreign coins, and still regulates their value. The legal tender, therefore, the constitutional standard of value, is established and cannot be overthrown. To overthrow it would shake the whole system."

If, now, we consider the history of the times when the Constitution was adopted; the intentions of the framers of that instrument, as shown in their debates; the contemporaneous exposition of the coinage power in the State conventions assembled to consider the Constitution, and in the public discussions before the people; the natural meaning of the terms used; the nature of the Constitution itself as creating a government of enumerated powers; the legislative exposition of nearly three-quarters of a century; the opinions of judicial tribunals, and the recorded utterances of statesmen, jurists, and commentators, it would seem impossible to doubt that the only standard of value authorized by the Constitution was to consist of metallic coins struck or regulated by the direction of Congress, and that the power to establish any other standard was denied by that instrument.

There are other considerations besides those I have stated, which are equally convincing against the constitutionality of the legal-tender provision of the act of February 25th, 1862, so far as it applies to private debts and debts by the government contracted previous to its passage. That provision operates directly to impair the obligation of such contracts. In the dissenting opinion, in the case of HEPBURN vs. GRISWOLD, this is admitted to be its operation, and the position is