Peter Vivian Daniel

“ Whilst we hold it a sound maxim that no powers should be conceded to the Federal government which cannot be regularly and legitimately found in the charter of its creation, we acknowledge equally the obligation to withhold from it no power or attribute which, by the same charter, has been declared necessary to the execution of expressly granted powers, and to the fulfilment of clear and well-defined duties. ”

“ Nothing could be more direct or explicit than the language of the court (5 Howard, 433) :-'We think it manifest that the language of the Constitution, by its proper signification, is limited to the facts, or to the faculty in Congress of coining and of stamping the standard of value upon what the government creates or shall adopt, and of punishing the offence of producing a false representation of what may have been so created or adopted. The imposture of passing a false coin creates, produces, or alters nothing ”

“ But the multiplied ramifications of crime require that the courts of the several States should have power to punish frauds in commerce and traffic, as well when coin is the instrument as in other cases. The machinery of State police and penal jurisprudence is better adapted and more effective. ”

“ It cannot be imputed to wise and practical statesmen, nor is it consistent with common sense, that they should have vested this high and exclusive authority, and with a view to objects partaking of the magnitude of the authority itself, only to be rendered immediately vain and useless, as must have been the case had the government been left disabled and impotent as to the only means of securing the objects in contemplation. ”

“ With having brought into the United States, from a foreign place, with intent to pass, utter, publish, and sell as true, certain false, forged, and counterfeit coins, made, forged, and counterfeited in the resemblance and similitude of certain gold and silver coins of the United States, coined at the mint, he knowing the same to be false, forged, and counterfeit, and intending thereby to defraud divers persons unknown. ”

“ It is the party to be directly affected by the fraud;-in the one case, the government; in the other, individuals. And the act of Congress of 1825 includes this very intent to defraud individuals, not the government.
II. The constitutionality of the Ohio law appears to have been sustained upon the ground, not of a concurrent jurisdiction of the offence in the State and national governments, but on the ground of an exclusive jurisdiction in the State. ”