Sovereign (currency)

“ In the modern state it is reserved for the sovereign authority. Most countries adopt a moderate seignior age charge. Thus the fundamental currency law of France (1803) provides that “ only the expense of coining ” shall be charged. ”

“ Furthermore, among all highly centralized nations, the regulation of the currency is one of the most jealously guarded of the prerogatives of sovereignty, because all values hinge upon the relation which the volume of the currency bears to the volume of trade. ”

“ A depreciation of money is not an accumulation of national wealth, and therefore a nation may both abound in currency, and also become poor and wretched. This is, invariably, effected by the system for increasing currency, combined with regulations by which its occupation of exchanging property is contracted, and that of transferring it, is extended. The supreme law of commerce governs currencies both local and universal. ”

“ It is clear that the power to regulate commerce between the States carries with it, not impliedly, but necessarily and directly, a full power of regulating the essential element of commerce, namely, the currency of the country, the money, which constitutes the life and soul of commerce. We live in an age when paper money is an essential element in all trade between the States ”

“ In short, it exercised a right which belongs to every independent nation, the right of so modifying its currency, when suddenly brought into circulation with foreign coins, as to preserve a due ratio between gold and silver, and thus prevent the former's being drained out of the country at one-third of its intrinsic value. ”

“ The states cannot coin money. Can they, then, coin that, which becomes the actual and almost universal substitute for money? Is not the right of issuing paper, intended for circulation in the place, and as the representative of metallic currency, derived merely from the power of coining and regulating the metallic currency? Could congress, if it did not possess the power of coining money and regulating the value of foreign coins, create a bank with the power to circulate bills? ”

“ How much have we all heard (we who are old enough) , within the last fifty years, of the power of congress, or of the States, "to regulate the currency." And "to regulate the currency" has always meant to fix the kind, and limit the amount, of currency, that men may be permitted to buy and sell, lend and borrow, give and receive, in their dealings with each other. ”

“ On account of the new money which had been made in Flanders and Scotland, he advised that all Scottish monies should be forbidden by proclamation, and also all other monies from beyond the sea, so that they should have no currency in England; and that no one should take them in payment, except at their value as bullion and for the King's coinage; that no one should export gold or silver, according to the statute in that case made, etc. ”

“ If there is one incontestable principle it is that all matters relating to the current coin of any country have their source in the supreme prerogative, and that no one has the right to arrogate to himself the power of circulating a private coinage on which he imprints for his own profit an arbitrary value. ”

“ I am one of those who believe that a United States note issued directly by the government, and convertible on demand into gold coin, or a government bond equal in value to gold, is the best currency we can adopt; that it is to be the currency of the future, not only in the United States, but in Great Britain as well; and that such a currency might properly continue to be a legal tender, except when coin is specifically stipulated for it. ”

“ So far from its containing a lurking prohibition, many have thought it was intended to confer upon Congress that general power over the currency which has always been an acknowledged attribute of sovereignty in every other civilized nation than our own, especially when considered in connection with the other clause which denies to the States the power to coin money, emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. ”

“ The coin of the country is shipped to foreign countries to meet demands against us in those countries, and to pay for such commodities as we purchase from them. Credit currency, no matter whether it is issued by the general or state government is not, nor can it under the the constitution, be made a legal tender by act of congress or by a decision of any court in the land, because the laws of trade will control the whole matter, being stronger than legal enactments or judicial decisions. ”

“ It is clear that nations, by giving any species of currency to an order or interest, will give it a title to every species of service from the multitude; that the revival by law of a title to such services through the intervention of a currency, is a substantial revival of the feudal system; that a legal currency possesses a power of destroying, with wonderful rapidity, the division of property which destroyed that system; and that without a very considerable division of property, a free government cannot exist. ”

“ From General Washington’s presidency to the last hour of the late President’s, both the government and the country have supposed Congress to be clothed with the general duty of protecting the currency, either as an inference from the coinage power or from the obvious and incontestable truth, that the regulation of the currency is naturally and plainly a branch of the commercial power. ”

“ Creditors may exact gold and silver or they may waive the right to require such money, and accept credit currency, or commodities, other than gold and silver, and the United States, as creditors, or in the exercise of their express power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, may, if they see fit, accept the treasury notes or bank bills in such payments as substitutes for the constitutional currency. ”

“ And let us not deceive ourselves by supposing that those who oppose this repeal are in favor of a purely metallic currency, to the exclusion of paper currency, for all intelligent men agree that every commercial nation must have both; the one as the standard of value by which all things are measured, which daily measures your bonds and notes as it measures wheat, cotton, and land; and also a paper or credit currency, which, from its convenience of handling or transfer, must be the medium of exchanges in the great body of the business of life. ”

“ We do not comprehend the wisdom of fixing and limiting the amount of currency the country may have for a circulating medium, and empowering one man to decide, how, when, and where it shall be distributed. Conceding to the general government the power to charter banks and issue treasury notes, the power is not exclusive. There is no limit to the volume of gold and silver, and if government should attempt to limit the amount of coin, it could not do it. ”

“ On this occasion I addressed a letter to a noble Lord, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, suggesting what appeared to me the proper remedy for this evil. I proposed that, with a view to the general [Pg 234] reform of the coins of the realm, all the deficient gold coins should in the first place be called in and recoined, and that in future the currency of the gold coin should be regulated by weight as well as by tale, and that the several pieces should not be legal tender if diminished below a certain weight. ”

“ From the twenty-fourth chapter of the statute of 1429 it appears, quite consonantly, "that the merchant aliens had of late introduced a custom of refusing to take silver, as they were wont, for their merchandises, and of taking only gold nobles, half-nobles, and farthings, which, from time to time, they carried out of the realm into other foreign countries, where they were changed to their increase and forged into other coins, so that they gained in the alloy of every noble twenty pence, against the tenor of the statutes, etc., and to the prejudice of the King and realm. ”

“ We find at this time that the General Assembly petitioned the King for permission to enhance the value of all the coins imported into the Colony to an extent represented by one-fourth of their face value; in other words, that body desired to obtain authority to rate a coin equal, let us say, to one dollar in our modern currency, at one dollar and a quarter, and having by the mere stroke of the pen given this arbitrary value, to compel all persons to whom it was offered, to receive it under threat of severe punishment. ”

“ Until that condition is realized, when the parity between our gold and silver money springs from and is supported by the relative value of the two metals, the value of the silver already coined, and of that which may hereafter be coined, must be kept constantly at par with gold by every resource at our command. The credit of the government, the integrity of its currency, and the inviolability of its obligations must be preserved. ”

“ All our silver and paper currency must be maintained at parity with gold, and we favor all measures designed to maintain inviolable the obligations of the United States and all our money, whether coin or paper, at the present standard, the standard of the most enlightened nations of the earth. ”

“ Currency, however fabricated, regulates value; and value, if left free, regulates currency, when it is used to facilitate exchanges; but when it is used to transfer property without compensation, it becomes an instrument in the hands of legislation, for fostering local and personal avarice. ”

“ Specie payments having been resumed by the Government and banks, all notes or bills of paper issued by either of a less denomination than $20 should by law be excluded from circulation, so that the people may have the benefit and convenience of a gold and silver currency which in all their business transactions will be uniform in value at home and abroad. ”

“ But if we understand by currency the legal money of the country, and that which constitutes a lawful tender for debts, and is the statute measure of value, then, undoubtedly, nothing is included but gold and silver. Most unquestionably there is no legal tender, and there can be no legal tender, in this country, under the authority of this government or any other, but gold and silver, either the coinage of our own mints, or foreign coins, at rates regulated by Congress. ”

“ On the one side is devotion to the country, and a firm, secure currency, which at any moment will bring its full value in gold; on the other, secession, with the inevitable attendant of a circulation, not depreciated, but utterly worthless, and that, too, with no other to fill its place, since the operation of the law must soon drive out of existence every dollar of the present local bank circulation: patriotism and prosperity arrayed against rebellion and ruin. ”

“ The one can prescribe no rules concerning the commerce or currency of the Nation: the other is in several respects the arbiter of commerce, and in this capacity can establish markets and fairs, can regulate weights and measures, can lay embargoes for a limited time, can coin money, can authorize or prohibit the circulation of foreign coin. ”

“ With our vast resources the circulation, if restricted to its present volume, would be easily manageable, and by gradual absorption in payment of public dues would give place to the precious metals, the only basis of a currency adapted to commerce with foreign countries. In our present circumstances I know of no mode of providing for the public wants which would entail sacrifices so great as a fresh issue of Treasury notes, and I trust that you will concur in the propriety of absolutely forbidding any increase of those now in circulation. ”

“ Truly gold is a product of the country, and imports should be paid with surplus produce; but while the credit of the currency, and thus credit generally, is based on gold, that metal cannot be a surplus product, be the aggregate supply what it may. What the people desire of money is not redemption, but constancy of value. Government has declared that the dollar shall be the legal means of payment. ”

“ The whole matter of the currency would have been placed where, by the constitution, it was designed to be placed—under the immediate supervision and control of Congress. The action of the government would have been independent of all corporations; and the same eye which rests unceasingly on the specie currency, and guards it against adulteration, would also have rested on the paper currency, to control and regulate its issues, and protect it against depreciation. ”

“ Therefore, the Populists, successors to the old Greenbackers, have always clung to it as an article of faith that the Federal Government should exercise its constitutional right to create a currency, and should not delegate that power to national banks or to private citizens or corporations.
The government should supply the country with a sufficient amount of national money, every dollar of which should be equal to any other; every dollar of which should be a full legal tender for all claims, public and private, and no dollar of which should be made redeemable in any other dollar. ”

“ It thus appears, that a depreciation of the currency does not affect the foreign trade of the country: this is carried on precisely as if the currency maintained its value. But though the trade is not affected, the exchanges are. When the imports and exports are in equilibrium, the exchange, in a metallic currency, would be at par; a bill on France for the equivalent of five sovereigns, would be worth five sovereigns. But five sovereigns, or the quantity of gold contained in them, having come to be worth in England 6l., it follows that a bill on France for 5l. ”