Bills

“ Previous to the Revolution, most of the States were in the habit, whenever they had occasion for more money than could be raised immediately by taxes, to issue paper notes or bills, in the name of the State, wherein they promised to pay to the bearer the sum named in the note or bill. ”

“ The purest question of form, that was ever presented to the mind of man—whether we shall combine in one united bill three measures, all of which are necessary, or separate them into three distinct bills, passing each in its turn, if it can be done. ”

“ Daring the war of our revolution the paper currency issued by congress was constantly denominated, in the acts of that body, bills of credit; and the like appellation was applied to similar currency issued by the states. The phrase had thus acquired a determinate and appropriate meaning. At the time of the adoption of the constitution, bills of credit were universally understood to signify a paper medium intended to circulate between individuals, and between government and individuals, for the ordinary purposes of society. Such a medium has always been liable to considerable fluctuation. ”

“ The whole history and legislation of the time prove that, by bills of credit, the framers of the constitution meant paper money, with reference to that which had been used in the states from the commencement of the century, down to the time when it ceased to pass, before reduced to its innate worthlessness. ”

“ These bills or notes are, by subsequent sections, authorized to be made payable to order or to bearer, and to be negotiable accordingly; and they are declared to be receivable at the treasury, and by public officers, in all payments of taxes and other debts to the state, and for county levies; and are to be payable and redeemable in gold and silver. ”

“ The United States constitution (art. I. § 9) says: “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.” Bills for appropriating money originate in the House of Representatives, but may be amended in the Senate. ”

“ He gave to each a one-hundred-dollar bill, with the request that they hide the bills for a year in the city of New York.
Any of them who should succeed in finding the hidden bill at the end of the year should share in the inheritance. ”

“ That banker will be enabled to make payment, by the bill I shall draw on Messrs Le Couteulx, & Co. in your favor. Perhaps it may be most convenient to send the bill holders to them, but this you will be the best judge of. It is unnecessary to state any reasons to you for accepting these bills, as I cannot suppose you will have the least hesitation on that subject. I take this opportunity, however, of pledging myself to you, that you shall suffer no inconvenience from honoring them with your acceptance, as I shall most certainly remit in time the bills sufficient to discharge all I draw on you. ”

“ The Wish of every discerning honest Man must be as obvious, viz that as many of the Bills may sink in the Loan Offices as the People can possibly spare, and as soon as possible. I think therefore you have judgd right of their Views. It would be an Act of Charity and a great Service to the publick if those who can afford to put their Money to Interest would ease their poorer fellow Citizens who are possessd of those Bills, by exchanging them for other Bills without a Discount. ”

“ In the Treasury Building and in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing one may see the entire process of manufacturing and issuing paper money. In the Treasury we see new bills exchanged for old, worn-out bills, which are ground to pieces to destroy forever their value as money.
BUREAU OF ENGRAVING AND PRINTING, “UNCLE SAM'S MONEY FACTORY”
But to understand the story of a dollar bill or a bill of any other value we must visit the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. ”

“ For, as the bills of the banks constitute the whole of the circulating medium; they gain, gratuitously, the interest on so much of their paper as is constantly absorbed in circulation: the amount of which we know is immense. ”

“ I have not, indeed, sir, often observed, that bills injudiciously drawn up at first have received great improvements from a second consideration, and have found it more easy to form a new bill, than to make alterations in one that is laid before us; for some original errour will commonly remain, and the sentiments of different men, pursuing different views, can seldom be modelled into one consistent scheme. ”

“ Slaves, as well as lands, were entailable during the monarchy: but, by an act of the first republican assembly, all donees in tail, present and future, were vested with the absolute dominion of the entailed subject.
Bills of exchange, being protested, carry 10 per cent. interest from their date.
No person is allowed, in any other case, to take more than five per cent. per annum simple interest, for the loan of monies. ”

“ But probably nine-tenths of all our debts are those between firm and firm or between man and man in the form of notes, bills of exchange, wage bills and open accounts, the amount of which is incalculable. ”

“ Whatever a government agrees to receive in payment of the public dues is a medium of circulation; is money, current money, no matter what its form may be—treasury notes, drafts drawn at Washington, by the treasurer, on the receiver-general at New York, or, to use the language employed in various parts of this bill, ‘such notes, bills, or paper, issued under the authority of the United States.’ These various provisions were probably inserted not only to cover the case of treasury notes, but that of these drafts in due season. ”

“ It established the doctrine that one systematic financier was better able to originate money bills and tax the people of the United States, than the whole collected wisdom of their Representatives, with the aid of a reciprocity of feeling. ”

“ Different persons, doubtless, will devise different schemes of relief. One would be to suppress instantly the currency of all paper not issued under the authority of our own State or of the General Government; to interdict after a few months the circulation of all bills of five dollars and under; after a few months more, all of ten dollars and under; after other terms, those of twenty, fifty, and so on to one hundred dollars, which last, if any must be left in circulation, should be the lowest denomination. ”

“ There was between the concurring judges and myself, no other difference of opinion, or in the reasons of our respective judgments, than in the definition of a bill of credit, which is thus given in the opinion (4 Pet. 432) : 'To emit bills of credit conveys to the mind the idea of issuing paper, intended to circulate through the community, for its ordinary purposes, as money, which paper is redeemable at a future day ”

“ They have money enough, each of them, to buy a safe, an iron box into which any carpenter could bore with an ordinary brace and bit, and enough over to pay for the printing of twenty thousand dollars' worth of bills in denominations of one, two, five and ten dollars. The printing finished, each man would sign his own bills as president, and one of the others would add the final touch of authenticity by signing a fictitious name to the same bills as cashier. ”

“ Justice Story has well said that the practical construction of the constitution and the history of the origin of the constitutional provision in question prove that revenue bills are those that levy taxes, in the strict sense of the word, and are not bills for other purposes which may incidentally create revenue. ”

“ A Bill that appropriates money or imposes taxes, levies or duties is a money Bill. A money Bill may not deal with any other matter except a subordinate matter incidental to the appropriation of money or the imposition of taxes, levies or duties. (2)
A provincial Act must provide for a procedure by which the Provincial Parliament may amend a money Bill.
Assent to Bills
31. ”

“ In this sense, all bank-notes, or, as the more common phrase is, bank-bills, are bills of credit. They are the bills of the party issuing them, on his credit, and the credit of his funds, for the purposes of circulation as currency or money. Thus, for example, as we all know, bank-notes payable to the bearer (or, when payable to order, indorsed in blank) , pass in the ordinary intercourse and business of life, as money; and circulate and are treated as money. They are not, indeed, in a legal and exact sense, money ”

“ I.⁠As regards the clauses of the Constitution relating to money, and as to the opinion of the framers of it about the emission of bills and making paper a legal tender.
The specifications of the power which is given to the Congress of the United States in the Constitution, relating to money, are two: power is given to borrow money and to coin money. Art. ”

“ He next selected a bright silver dollar, but, true to his better nature, he acknowledged its insufficiency, and swept it after the five-dollar bill. His third move was a compromise. He took twenty-four two-dollar bills, looked at them for a moment regretfully, then gathered them in his hand and walked toward where the clerks were just finishing and locking up for the night. ”

“ From an original bill in the Harvard College copy of Phillips’ Hist. Sketches of Paper Currency. Fac-similes of bills of 1727 and 1742 are given in Smith’s Lit. and Hist. Curiosities, p. liii. Cf. also Potter’s Manchester.
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NEW HAMPSHIRE THREE-POUNDS BILL, 1740. ”

“ The twenty-eight sections of the bill, with all its safes, and vaults, and bars, and bolts, and receivers-general, and examiners, have nothing more nor less in view than the exaction of specie from the people, and the subsequent distribution of that specie among the officers of the government, and the creditors of the government. It does not touch, nor profess to touch, the actual currency of the country. ”

“ No such power exists; neither the man who holds the real bill, nor the man who discounts it, has any property in the specific goods for which it was given: he as much trusts to the general ability to pay of the giver of the bill, as the holder of any fictitious bill does. The fictitious bill may, in many cases, be a bill given by a person having a large and known capital, a part of which the fictitious bill may be said in that case to represent. ”

“ The judicious legislation of Congress, securing the receivability of these notes for loans and internal duties and making them a legal tender for other debts, has made them an universal currency, and has satisfied, partially at least, and for the time, the long-felt want of an uniform circulating medium, saving thereby to the people immense sums in discounts and exchanges. ”

“ Congress is to fix that volume, and by increasing or diminishing it, Congress is therefore to determine what every dollar in the land shall be worth. The value of every piece of property, of every article of merchandise, of every private fortune, of every chance the contractor has in his contract, of every dollar the laboring man has in the savings bank or the merchant on deposit, will be at the mercy of the Congress of the United States. ”

“ I would further recommend to the attention of the honorable Congress the propriety and absolute necessity of resorting to a new issue of paper, not exceeding in amount three hundred and fifty thousand dollars—not more than fifty thousand dollars of which to be issued in any one month until the whole shall be put in circulation. The Government must be supported, and the people must have a currency. ”

“ The chief duty of the National Government in connection with the currency of the country is to coin money and declare its value. Grave doubts have been entertained whether Congress is authorized by the Constitution to make any form of paper money legal tender. ”

“ There shall be endorsed on every Money Bill when it is transmitted to the Legislative Council under article 198, and when it is presented to the Governor for assent under article 200, the certificate of the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly signed by him that it is a Money Bill. ”

“ The quantum of taxes already imposed is so great as to make it useless to impose any others to a considerable amount. A bill has, however, passed both Houses, payable in specie, bank notes, or your notes, for eighteen thousand pounds. ”

“ If a Money Bill—that is, a Public Bill concerning taxation or the appropriation of money or the raising of a loan, etc.—shall be passed byy the House of Commons, but shall not be passed by the House of Lords, within one month, then it shall become law without the consent of the Lords. ”

“ A resolution of Congress taken in a particular case, which stood on the same ground on which the general one will stand, founds a presumption amounting nearly to a certainty that they will pay to the holder of every bill what it cost him, or the person whom he represents at the time of receiving it, with an interest from that time, of six per cent. They have of course established no rule of evidence as to the time of receiving the money. ”

“ It is true, that we cannot originate such a bill; but, undoubtedly, in contemplating the condition of the public affairs, and in the right consideration of all questions touching the amount of the revenue, and the mode in which it shall be raised, and involving the great questions of expenditure and retrenchment, and how far the expenses of the government may safely and properly be diminished, it is perfectly legitimate for us to deliberate and to act as duty may demand. ”

“ It is the exclusive function of the general government to coin and create money and regulate its value. All bank issues designed to circulate as money should be suppressed. The circulating medium, whether of metal or paper, shall be issued by the government, and made a full legal-tender for all debts, duties, and taxes in the United States, at its stamped value. ”