“ Nay, is it worse than to lose everything by the subversion of the government? What is it that protects him in the accumulation and possession of his wealth? Is it not the government and its laws? and can he not consent to trust that government for a brief period until it shall have vindicated its right to exist? All property and all rights, even those of liberty and life, are held subject to the fundamental condition of being liable to be impaired by providential calamities and national vicissitudes. Taxes impair my income or the value of my property. ”

“ Chief Justice Marshall said, 'It is not on slight implication and vague conjecture that the legislature is to be pronounced to have transcended its powers and its acts to be considered void. The opposition between the Constitution and the law should be such that the judge feels a clear and strong conviction of their incompatibility with each other.' It is incumbent, therefore, upon those who affirm the unconstitutionality of an act of Congress to show clearly that it is in violation of the provisions of the Constitution. It is not sufficient for them that they succeed in raising a doubt. ”

“ I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power, but it is evident that it would furnish to men disposed to usurp a plausible pretence for claiming that power. They might urge, with a semblance of reason, that the Constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication that a right to prescribe proper regulations concerning it was intended to be vested in the National government. ”

“ Can the poor man's cattle, and horses, and corn be thus taken by the government when the public exigency requires it, and cannot the rich man's bonds and notes be in like manner taken to reach the same end? If the government enacts that the certificates of indebtedness which it gives to the farmer for his cattle and provender shall be receivable by the farmer's creditors in payment of his bonds and notes, is it anything more than transferring the government loan from the hands of one man to the hands of another perhaps far more able to advance it? ”

“ When the ordinary currency disappears, as it often does in time of war, when business begins to stagnate and general bankruptcy is imminent, then the government must have power at the same time to renovate its own resources and to revive the drooping energies of the nation by supplying it with a circulating medium. What that medium shall be, what its character and qualities, will depend upon the greatness of the exigency, and the degree of promptitude which it demands. These are legislative questions. The heart of the nation must not be crushed out. ”

“ 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 assume 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. ”

“ It would be wonderful that a government formed in modern times and for a commercial people, and in large measure the offspring of commercial wants, should not be provided with all the powers on the subject of money-that indispensable instrument of commerce-which have been possessed by the governments of other commercial nations. The world's experience did not fall into barren soil when it was cast by history into the minds of the men who framed the Constitution of the United States. ”

“ A government without power is contemptible. The men who made this government intended that it should have strength enough to maintain its own existence, and to accomplish the ends for which it was made. The mainspring of a government is in the department that makes the laws, and there the Constitution has wisely reposed power sufficient for national exigencies. In relation to money and contracts, the Constitution is jealous of the States, but shows no jealousy of Congress. Power in Congress is as little liable to abuse as power elsewhere. ”

“ It is not an attempt to coin money out of a valueless material, like the coinage of leather or ivory or kowrie shells. It is a pledge of the national credit. It is a promise by the government to pay dollars; it is not an attempt to make dollars. The standard of value is not changed. The government simply demands that its credit shall be accepted and received by public and private creditiors during the pending exigency. Every government has a right to demand this when its existence is at stake. The interests of every citizen are bound up with the fate of the government. ”

“ Justice Story, whilst commenting upon the power of the legislature of Rhode Island under the charter of Charles II, said: 'The fundamental maxims of a free government seem to require that the rights of personal liberty and private property should be held sacred. At least no court of justice in this country would be warranted in assuming that the power to violate and disregard them, a power so repugnant to the common principles of justice and civil liberty, lurked under any general grant of legislative authority, or ought to be implied from any general expressions of the will of the people. ”

“ We must inquire, therefore, to the exercise of which one of the powers delegated to government 'it is necessary and proper,' it is even 'appropriate and plainly adapted,' that treasury notes should be made a legal tender for antecedent debts. Is it appropriate and plainly adapted to the power to borrow money, to regulate commerce, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, to suppress insurrections or repel invasions, or even to any of these powers united? For it is true that Congress had occasion to exercise every one of these powers at the time when these notes were issued. ”

“ Now, if it were certain that nothing else would have supplied the absolute necessities of the treasury, that nothing else would have enabled the government to maintain its armies and navy, that nothing else would have saved the government and the Constitution from destruction, while the legal tender acts would, could any one be bold enough to assert that Congress transgressed its powers? ”

“ Nor should it be ever lost sight of that the government of the United States is one of limited and enumerated powers; and that a departure from the true import and sense of its owers is, pro tanto, the establishment of a new Constitution. It is doing for the people what they have not chosen to do for themselves. It is usurping the functions of a legislator and deserting those of an expounder of the law. Arguments drawn from impolicy or inconvenience ought here to be of no weight. ”

“ 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 class and in the purchasers of bonds to depress to the lowest point the credit of the notes. ”

“ 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 determining the meaning of the Constitution, 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 Constitution. ”

“ It may be conceded that Congress is not authorized to enact laws in furtherance even of a legitimate end, merely because they are useful, or because they make the government stronger. There must be some relation between the means and the end; some adaptedness or appropriateness of the laws to carry into execution the powers created by the Constitution. But when a statute has proved effective in the execution of powers confessedly existing, it is not too much to say that it must have had some appropriateness to the execution of those powers. ”

“ Influenced by those considerations the framers of the Constitution not only authorized Congress to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises to any and every extent, but also to coin money and to borrow money without any limitation as to amount, showing that the argument that to deny the implied power to make paper emissions a legal tender will be to cripple the government, is a mere chimera, without any solid constitutional foundation for its support. ”

“ Since then, except in these specific instances, when, before this legal tender law, has Congress claimed to exercise such a power? Has it ever been suggested that Congress can direct divorces-can authorize a man to discharge a contract for one hundred bushels of wheat by delivering fifty, or fulfil a contract to convey one thousand acres of land by conveying nine hundred? We all know it cannot. ”

“ It is absolutely essential to independent national existence that government should have a firm hold on the two great sovereign instrumentalities of the sword and the purse, and the right to wield them without restriction on occasions of national peril. In certain emergencies government must have at its command, not only the personal services-the bodies and lives-of its citizens, but the lesser, though not less essential, power of absolute control over the resources of the country. ”

“ It would be sad, indeed, if this great nation were now to be deprived of a power so necessary to enable it to protect its own existence, and to cope with the other great powers of the world. No doubt foreign powers would rejoice if we should deny the power. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And it is difficult to see the difference in constitutional principle when the article on which a legal value is fixed, and which is made a legal tender, is the nation's paper promise to pay, now worth in the market over nine-tenths of its legal value in coin, and certain, if the nation keeps its faith, to be ultimately worth its par in coin.
Some men appear to consider that there is a peculiar constitutional virtue in metal, whether gold, silver, nickel, or copper. According to them, what is a crime against the Constitution, if done in paper, may be innocently done in metal. ”

“ Beyond all question the cases cited 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, and being in other respects best adapted to the purpose, are the only proper measures of value; that these values are determined by weight and purity, and that form and impress are simply certificates of value, worthy of absolute reliance only because of the known integrity and good faith of the government which' put them in circulation. ”

“ The genius, the nature, and the spirit of our State governments amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation, and the general principles of law and reason forbid them. The legislature may enjoin, permit, forbid, and punish; they may declare new crimes, and establish rules of conduct for all its citizens in future cases; they may command what is right and prohibit what is wrong, but they cannot change innocence into guilt, or punish innocence as a crime, or violate the rights of an antecedent lawful private contract, or the right of private property. ”

“ The power 'to coin money' is, in my judgment, inconsistent with and repugnant to the existence of a power to make anything but coin a legal tender. To coin money is to mould metallic substances having intrinsic value into certain forms convenient for commerce, and to impress them with the stamp of the government indicating their value. Coins are pieces of metal, of definite weight and value, thus stamped by national authority. ”

“ The debtor interest of the country represent its bone and sinew, and must be encouraged to pursue its avocations. If relief were not afforded universal bankruptcy would ensue, and industry would be stopped, and government would be paralyzed in the paralysis of the people. It is an undoubted fact that during the late civil war, the activity of the workshops and factories, mines and machinery, shipyards, railroads and canals of the loyal States, caused by the issue of the legal tender currency, constituted an inexhaustible fountain of strength to the National cause. ”

“ The importance of the question is that its decision depends upon, and must determine, the powers of Congress in respect of private rights. For if Congress may impair the obligation of contracts in this respect, it may in other respects; and the obligation of contracts is among the most important subject as to which Congress can legislate. It is, as Chief Justice Marshall well said, a power which comes home to every man; touches the interest and controls the credit of all. ”

“ 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, simply, 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. ”