Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1878 — THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE GREENBACK. [ARTICLE]

THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE GREENBACK.

[By Hon. D. B. Stubbs, of Muscatine, lowa.] But we are told that Congress has no power under the constitution to issue money except as a war measure. Republican orators, and many that the people never looked upon as orators, loudly proclaimed last fall that the constitution positively forbids the issuing of money by the General Government except as a war measure, In fact both of my opponents last year proclaimed this, and the Democratic candidate said it was evident that we could have no further issue of greenbacks unless we went to war for the power. I submit this proposition : If Congress does not possess the power to issue money, how can it delegate the power to the national-banking corporations to issue money ? How can it delegate greater power than it possesses? All corporations are creatures of the Government that creates them and nave only just such powers as the creator—the Government —gives them, and no other. If the Government does not have the power to issue money then it gives the corporations that it creates greater power than it possesses itself. How this can be is more than I can under stand or solve after more than twenty years’ arduous study and practice of the law. Perhaps some of those all-know-ing orators of the old school of politics, who never read a law* book, can explain the mystery. Some of the wisest of these men have gone farther, and told us that the Supreme Court of the United States has decided by its solemn opinion that the greenback was only a war measure and that the constitution absolutely prohibits the issue of legal-tender currency only in time of war. When you hear one of these high-toned clackers make this assertion you may rest assured that he has never read the legal-tender decision made by the Supreme Court of the United States or else he has no sort of regard for truth. Our Supreme Court has been called upon in various cases to decide as to the constitutionality of the Legal-Tender acts of Congress. The leading ones are those of Hepburn vs. Griswold, reported in 8 Wallace United States Supreme Court reports, p. 606, and the two cases of Knox vs. Lee, and Parker vs. Davis, reported in 12 Wallace, 457. In the first case mentioned one Hepburn made a promissory note in the usual manner and form, dated June 20, 1860, promising to pay Henry Griswold $11,250 on the 20th day of February, 1862. This note both bore date and became due before the passage of the Legal- Tenderact of Feb. 25,1862. In this case the question that was presented for the determination of the Supreme Court was whether or not the payee of a note, made before the LegalTender act took effect, was obliged by law to accept in payment United States notes equal in nominal amount to the sum due according to its terms when tendered by the maker.

In this case the court held that all contracts for the payment of money, not expressly stipulating otherwise, were, in legal effect and universal understanding, contracts for the payment of coin, and ruled that defendant’s tender of United States treasury notes was not a satisfaction of the debt, but that the contract, being made before the law making these notes a full legal tender took effect, must be governed by the law in force at the time of the making of the contract, and that Hepburn must pay Griswold in coin. There does not seem to be any new law in the doctrines here laid down, which is that legislative enactments cannot change or impair the obligation of oentracts.

This decision was made in February, 1870, and may have made some men seriously reflect upon the status of the 5-20 bonds, notwithstanding the passage of the act to strengthen the public credit passed March 18, 1869, and it had the effect no doubt to hasten the enactment of the refunding bill passed July 14, 1870, so as to have our 5-20 bonds refunded and made by contract payable in coin,which was done on that date. And it transpired that the decision in the Hepburn-Griswold case did not then suit the chiefs of the party. Many of them had debts to pay off that had been contracted before the passage of the Legal-Tender acts, and it suited their convenience to pay just then in greenbacks instead of coin. Bear in mind that no decision had then or ever has been made declaring the law to be that debts contracted while the Legal-Tender law was in force could not be paid in United States treasury notes, only that they would not pay the debts contracted before the passage of these acts. And, having the power, this party no doubt increased the number of Supreme Judges from seven, the number on the bench at the time of the Hepburn-Gris-wold decision, to consist of nine members, a Chief Justice and eight Associates, and on the 18th day of February, 1870, Justice Strong was appointed, and on the 21st of March Justice Bradley was appointed. Now, with a Supreme bench organized for the very purpose of making a decision that the greenback was constitutional and would discharge any and all debts, whether made before

the Legal-Tender acts took effect or subsequent, the case of Knox vs. Lee, and Parker vs. Davis, the one from Texas and the other from Massachusetts, were consolidated and brought before the Supreme Court, and at the request of the court the question of the constitutionality of the Legal-Tender acts was to be fully argued and finally settled by the court, so that the question should be forever put at rest I have both arguments and the opinion of the Supreme Court before me. But I cannot read the whole opinion, as it would require much time. I will say that I hope each man who feels an interest in this question will procure and read the decision. I characterize it as the most elaborate and strongest greenback document that is now in print, and of the very highest authority, however, to the jurisprudence of the land. In this ease the court held that the Legal-Tender acts were constitutional as applied both to past and future contracts. The court says: “Before we can hold the Legal-Tender acts unconstitutional we must be convinced they were not appropriate means, or means conducive to the execution of any or all of the powers of Congress, or of the Government, not appropriate in any degree (for we are not judges of that degree of appropriation), or we must hold they were prohibited.”—l2 Wallace, United States Supreme Court Reports, page 509. “ The degree of the necessity for any Congressional enactment, or the relative degree of its appropriateness is for consideration in Congress; not here. When the law is not prohibited, and is really calculated to effect any of the objects intrusted to the Government, to undertake here to inquire into the degree of its necessity would be to pass the line which circumscribes the judicial department and to tread on legislative ground.— Ibid, 542. So you see that the question is not decided upon the contingency of war, but the whole matter of the necessity of any constitutional enactment is left to Congress, The whole of this decision leaves the right to issue legal-tender money upon the same authority in the constitution that there is for the Government to make contracts, to require an oath from officers, to build a Presidential mansion, a Capitol or any of the department buildings; to punish robberies of the mails and postoffices, to prohibit the circulation of obscene literature, to provide for taking the statistics of Territories and of the United States, respecting age, sex, health, etc.; to improve rivers and harbors, to establish buoys and light-houses, to establish a United. States Bank. All of these things have been and are being done without any express power stated in the constitution. The court says : “The constitution was intended to frame a government as distinguished from a league or compact—a Government supreme in some particulars over States and people. It was designed to provide the same currency, having a uniform legal value in all the States. It was for this reason the power to coin money and regulate its value was conferred upon the Federal Government, while the same power as well as the power to emit bills of credit was withheld from the States. The States can no longer declare what shall be money or regulate its value. Whatever power there is over the currency is vested in Congress. If the power to declare what is money is not in Congress, it is annihilated.—lbid, 545. “ And, generally, when one of such powers was expressly denied to the States only, it was for the purpose of rendering the Federal power more complete and exclusive; how sensible then its framers must have been that emergencies might arise when the precious metals might prove inadequate to the necessities of the Government and the demands of the people—when it is remembered that paper money was almost exclusively in use in the States as the medium of exchange, and when the great evil sought to be remedied was the want of uniformity in the current value of money, it might be argued, we say, that the gift of power to coin money and regulate the value thereof was understood as conveying general power over the currency, and which had belonged to the States, and which they surrendered.” —lbid, 546. * * * * “By the obligation of a contract to pay money is to pay that which law shall recognize as money when the payment is to be made.

‘ ‘lf there is anything settled by decision it is this, and we do not understand it to be controverted. No one ever doubted that a debt of SI,OOO, contracted before 1834, could be paid by 100 eagles coined after that year,though they contained no more gold than ninety-four eagles coined when the contract was made, and this is not because of the intrinsic value of the coin, but because of its legal value. The eagles coined after 1834 were not money until they were authorized by law, and, had they been coined before, without a law fixing their legal value, they could no more have paid a debt than uncoined bullion, or cotton, or wheat. Every contract for the payment of money is necessarily subject to the constitutional power of the Government over the currency, whatever that power may be, and the obligation of the parties is, therefore, assumed with reference to that power.”— lbid, 548-9. “If, therefore, they (the legal tenders) were, what we have endeavored to show, appropriate ends, they were not transgressive of the authority vested in Congress.”—lbid, 552. “It is hardly correct to speak of a standard of value. The constitution does not speak of it. t contemplates a standard for that which has gravity or extension; but value is an ideal thing. The coinage acts fix its unit as a dollar ; but the gold or silver thing we call a dollar is, in no sense, a standard of a dollar, it is a representative of it. There might never have been a piece of money of the denomination of a dollar. * * “ It will be seen that we hold the acts of Congress constitutional as applied to contracts made before or after their passage. In so holding we overrule so much of what was decided in Hepburn vs. Griswold as ruled the acts unwarranted by the constitution so far as they apply to contracts made before this enactment.”—lbid, 553. So the question of the constitutionality of the power of Congress to authorize the issue of legal-tender cu r rency has been settled. It may be that Wall street and British gold will force from our Judges a reversal of this decision, and foist upon the country a ruling as infamously wicked and baleful as was that in the Dred Scott case. It may be, for gold has become more potent than justice, philanthropy or the rights of the people, but let the perpetrators of such a deed remember the termination of Belshazzar’s impious meetings.