Money judgment

“ Beyond all question, the money was wrongfully exacted, and it is equally certain that in equity and good conscience it ought to be returned, or so much of it as is not barred by the Statute of Limitations. ”

“ But, strange to say, three-fourths of what is being used and paid for as money, and which really does the work of money, and does nothing else, is denied the right of being called money by some doctrinaires—and also by bankers, when talking to the public. ”

“ For the moment, let us leave money out of the question. Could any man justly be indicted, should the result of the transaction be that he had borne all the expenses and risks, and yet, had ended with but one pound of goods to replace his original pound? ”

“ That is all there is of that, and we are going to pay it just as soon as we make the money to pay it with, and we are going to make the money out of prosperity.
We have to dig it out of the earth. You cannot make a dollar by law. You cannot redeem a cent by statute. You cannot pay one solitary farthing by all the resolutions, by all the speeches ever made beneath the sun. ”

“ Theoretically, every dollar’s worth of material property, that is capable of being taken by law, and applied to the payment of the owner’s debts, is capable of being represented by a promissory note, that shall circulate as money.
But taking all this material property at only half its actual value, it is still capable of supplying the twenty-five thousand millions of dollars—or one thousand dollars each—which these laborers need.
Now, we know—because experience has taught us—that solvent promissory notes, made payable in coin on demand, are the best money that mankind have ever had ”

“ Borrowing and over-spending are among human frailties. They are also forms of risk-taking or gambling. Who knows whether the banker who promises to pay on demand will be alive and doing business next week when his promise to pay is presented for settlement? When the promise to pay is issued by a government which decides the value of currency, and accepted by that government as payment for taxes and other obligations, it is more readily acceptable than paper issued and guaranteed by an individual money lender or banker. ”

“ In other words, the one thing which legal-tender money can surely do in spite of the habits, wishes or prejudices of the business community in which it exists, namely, cancel past debt, is infinitesimally small when compared with those other things which man wishes money to do for him. ”

“ The laboring man and the producer are entitled to these benefits, and the money loaner, by every law of justice, ought to be content with a dollar equal in purchasing power to the dollar which he loaned, and any one desiring more than that desires a dishonest dollar, it matters not what name he may give to it. Take an illustration: John Doe, of Nebraska, has a farm worth $2,000 and mortgages it to Richard Roe, of Massachusetts, for $1,000. Suppose the value of the monetary unit is increased by legislation which creates a greater demand for gold. The debt is increased. ”

“ Any man can pay three or four pence a day, though no poor man can, at the end of a year, pay six pounds. Take my advice, every man of you, and you will hardly feel your taxes.
But further, a tender law is the devil. When I trust a man a sum of money, I expect he will return the full value. That Legislature which says my debtor may pay me with one third of the value he received, commits a deliberate act of villany ”

“ Money has now the rule that used to belong to rank. And the chief use of the lesser royalties seems to be to dignify wealth by associating with it. Hence the court that the rich pay to them—the eagerness to entertain them, to take them on private yachts, to amuse them with automobile trips, to promote their fortunes on the Stock Exchange, and even to give them money if they will take it. ”

“ Under these circumstances the extra dollars paid or the dollars from which the debtors were excused would stand out definitely and would be a subject for debate and dispute, but if the tabular standard were merged in the actual money of the country the ordinary debtor and creditor would be as unaware of how his interests had been affected as he is now unaware of how his interests are affected by gold appreciation. It would still be true that to the ordinary man "a dollar is a dollar." ”

“ In order to get at the true nature and obligation of debt, it is necessary to consider that a promise to pay money is of no legal importance, except as evidence of debt. It does not, of itself, create the debt. ”

“ A constant but unperceived rise in the value of the dollar with which those payments must be made, baffles all plans, thwarts all calculation, and destroys all equities between debtor and creditor. If we can not intelligently regulate our money volume so as to maintain unchanging the value of the money unit, if we can not preserve our people from the blighting effects which an increase in the measuring power of the money unit entails upon all industry, to what purpose is our boasted civilization? ”

“ All the bank could in any event claim would be the right to draw out of the general mass of money, so long as it remained money, an amount equal to that which had been wrongfully taken from its own possession and put there. ”

“ The Government, in my judgment, cannot create money; the Government can give its note, like an individual, and the prospect of its being paid determines its value. ”

“ This is what government has uniformly done in its proposals for raising money.—Were I to desire any sum to be lent me without interest, offering as a compensation or premium an annuity for a given term, or an advantageous contract; the proposal would not be accepted, unless the annuity or the contract was worth the sum to be lent; and I should make myself a debtor to the purchaser for the very thing which I sold to him.—The absurdity would be the same, if instead of borrowing without interest, I should in the same way borrow at a low interest. ”

“ Of course it is hard to answer the proposition that value expressed in money depends on what people think at the time. That determines what they will give for the thing, and, whether they think rightly or wrongly, if they or some of them will give a certain price for it, that is its value then. Nevertheless, it has been held, under some circumstances, even in ordinary suits, that when events have corrected the prophecy of the public the facts may be shown and a more correct valuation adopted. ”

“ We cannot help contrasting the evil done with the benefits that might have been bestowed by this money. What a fund it had made to lessen the hardships imposed upon the poor!—to mitigate the sufferings of the mechanic!—and to lighten the burdens of the honest citizen! ”

“ GOLD A FETICH—DEMAND FOR A STANDARD OF JUSTICE.
The history of the world affords no example of a money system regulated by human prescience and intelligent calculation. It is not too much to say that the money system of the world—the most important associative instrumentality of civilization, in so far as it is not controlled for their own advantage by the creditor classes—is practically the result of accident. ”

“ In the present times, money has taken the place of this spirit; it has become the universal lever, and you are in want of it. A spirit of finance affects every department of the state; it reigns triumphant at Court; all have become venal ”

“ And there is abundant evidence, that whatever benefit is possible from that compulsion to some individuals or to the government, is far more than outweighed by the losses of property, the derangement of business, the fluctuations of currency and values, and the increase of prices to the people and the government, and the long train of evils which flow from the use of irredeemable paper money. It is true that these evils are not to be attributed altogether to making it a legal tender. ”

“ If the money has increased or decreased in purchasing power, I have satisfied my debt with dishonest dollars. While the Government can say that a given weight of gold or silver shall constitute a dollar, and invest that dollar with legal-tender qualities, it cannot fix the purchasing power of the dollar. That must depend upon the law of supply and demand, and it may be well to suggest that this Government never tried to fix the exchangeable value of a dollar until it began to limit the number of dollars coined. ”

“ We may each one of us counsel our active and enterprising countrymen to be constantly on their guard, to liquidate debts contracted in a paper currency, and by conducting business as nearly as possible on a system of cash payments or short credits to hold themselves prepared to return to the standard of gold and silver. To aid our fellow-citizens in the prudent management of their monetary affairs, the duty devolves on us to diminish by law the amount of paper money now in circulation. ”

“ Many people must borrow, and nobody will lend without such a consideration for the use of their money as is suitable, not only to what can be made by the use of it, but to the difficulty and danger of evading the law. ”

“ You pays your money and you takes your choice. Now, I'm perfectly willing to pay the money, but I do not choose that either you or I shall become a lawbreaker and go slinking home with our petty, illicit possessions, just to save a few dollars. ”

“ These necessities, then, are the really valuable things of the world. What objection, then, can you make that can have the sanction, even of your own reason, to at once admitting that these are the only real values the world contains, and consequently—because legitimately—that whatever is money must be a representative of these valuables: and also and further, that anything bearing the name of money, which does not justly and fully represent the sum total of these, is not money in the true sense of that term.
Again: Money may be considered the negative pole of the battery of value. ”

“ My dissent comes when he seeks to erect the abstractions of the jurist into a complete social philosophy! Law is only a part of the system of social control, and economic values, while influenced by legal values, are far from being explained when legal factors only are taken into account. Legal factors often play a more direct part in connection with the value of money than in connection with other values, but they do not dominate the value of money. ”

“ Such a use of his economic gain, the right to receive income, to procure a satisfaction which can be obtained only by the expenditure of money or property, would seem to be the enjoyment of the income whether the satisfaction is the purchase of goods at the corner grocery, the payment of his debt there, or such non-material satisfactions as may result from the payment of a campaign or community chest contribution, or a gift to his favorite son. ”

“ Now money itself can neither be used, nor made produc­tive, in any other way than by being exchanged for other commodities, or by being wrought into some other shape than coin. These facts, then, are enough to prove it must have been the intention of the lender, or bailor, that the borrower, or bailee, should be at liberty to exchange the money loaned, for other commodities. ”

“ We certainly do want to pay our debts in honest money.
Gospel truth! And there is but one kind of perfectly honest money—that which will give the creditor an equivalent in commodities for what he could have bought with the money he loaned. Surely no honest man will pretend that gold today does that. At this point we must admit the painful truth that, in that sense, there is no perfectly honest money, that is, no money that does not change somewhat in purchasing power ”

“ And capital having the power of bringing an unearned income as long as money is thus blessed, I still hold that justice is not attained until the gross interest is reduced to the rate of risk and cost of making loans, the cost of making the tokens being defrayed by public contributions. ”

“ It may be said that viewing the fund here as proceeds, it has lost the legal qualities of the specific thing; that it is turned into mere currency; and not specifically liable any more than would be the general means of the owners.
It is a well established rule of common law and equity, that the proceeds or pecuniary result of the thing is regarded as the representative of the thing; as the thing itself: and that money may be specifically appropriated, and bound, if it can be traced, and, as a fund, identified. And such is the principle too of admiralty. ”

“ And yet, after such Men are possessed of as much Land as they can purchase, it will then be their Interest to have Money made Plentiful, because that will immediately make Land rise in Value in their Hands. Now it ought not to be wondered at, if People from the Knowledge of a Man's Interest do sometimes make a true Guess at his Designs; for, Interest, they say, will not Lie.
3. Lawyers, and others concerned in Court Business, will probably many of them be against a plentiful Currency ”

“ These men avail themselves of the credit, or the ultimate responsibility of the giddy and thoughtless young spendthrift in his eager pursuit of criminal pleasures, and under the influence of those allurements, which the various places of fashionable resort hold out; and seldom fail to obtain from them securities and obligations for large sums; upon the credit of which they are enabled, perhaps at usurious interest, to borrow money or discount bills, and thus supply their unfortunate customers upon the most extravagant terms. ”

“ A man obtains his end equally when that end is to induce another to lend to his friend and when it is to bring about a loan to himself. It seems to us that it would be a natural use of ordinary English to say that he obtained the money for his friend. So when the statute speaks simply of obtaining money, the question for whom the money must be obtained depends upon the context and the policy of the act. ”