« 이전계속 »
power, and to disregard the accepted rules for construing the Constitution. The degree of the necessity for any congressional enactment, or the relative degree of its appropriateness, if it have any appropriateness, is for consideration in Congress, not here. Said Chief Justice Marshall, in McCullough vs. Maryland, as already stated, "When the law is not prohibited, and is really calculated to effect any of the objects intrusted to the Government, to undertake here to inquire into the degree of its necessity would be to pass the line which circumscribes the judicial department, and to tread on legislative ground."
It is plain to our view, however, that none of those measures which it is now conjectured might have been substituted for the legal-tender acts could have met the exigencies of the case at the time when those acts were passed. We have said that the credit of the Government had been tried to its utmost endurance. Every new issue of notes which had nothing more to rest upon than Government credit must have paralyzed it more and more, and rendered it increasingly difficult to keep the Army in the field, or the Navy afloat. It is an historical fact that many persons and institutions refused to receive and pay those notes that had been issued, and even the head of the Treasury represented to Congress the necessity of making the new issues legal tenders, or rather, declared it impossible to avoid the necessity. The vast body of men in the military service wa3 composed of citizens who had left their farms, their workshops, and their business with families and debts to be provided for. The Government could not pay them with ordinary Treasury notes, nor could they discharge their debts with such a cur rency. Something more was needed, something that had all the uses of money. And as no one could be compelled to take common Treasury notes in payment of debts, and as the prospect of ultimate redemption was remote and contingent, it is not too much to say that they must have depreciated in the market long before the war closed, as did the currency of the confederate States. Making the notes legal tender gave them anew use, and it needs no argument to show that the value of things is in proportion to the uses to which they may be applied.
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. The rules of construction heretofore adopted do not demand that the relationship between the means and the end shall be direct and immediate. Illustrations of this may be found in several of the cases above cited. The charter of a Bank of
the United States, the priority given to the debts due the Government over private debts, and the exemptiou of Federal loans from liability to State taxation, are only a few of the many which might be given. The case of Veazie Bank vs. Fenno, (8 Wal., 533,) presents a suggestive illustration. There a tax of ten per cent, on State bank notes in circulation was held constitutional, not merely because it was a means of raising revenue, but as an instrument to put out of existence such a circulation in competition with notes issued by the Government. There, this court, speaking through the Chief Justice, avowed that it is the constitutional right of Congress to provide a currency for the whole country; that this might be done by coin, or United States notes, or notes of national banks; and that it cannot be questioned Congress may constitutionally secure the benefits of such a currency to the people by appropriate legislation. It was said there can be no question of the power of this Government to emit bills of credit; to make them receivable in payment of debts to itself; to fit them for use by those who see fit to use them in all the transactions of commerce; to make them a currency uniform in value and description, and convenient and useful for circulation. Here the substantive power to tax was allowed to be employed for improving the currency. It is not easy to see why, if State bank notes can be taxed out of existence for the purpose of indirectly making United States notes more convenient and useful for commercial purposes, the same end may not be secured directly by making them a legal tender.
Concluding, then, that the provision which made Treasury notes a legal tender for the payment of all debts other than those expressly excepted was not an inappropriate means for carrying into execution the legitimate powers of the Government, we proceed to inquire whether it was forbidden by the letter or spirit of the Constitution. It is not claimed that any express prohibition exists, but it is insisted that the spirit of the Constitution was violated by the enactment. Here those who assert the unconstitutionality of the acts mainly rest their argument. They claim that the clause which conferred upon Congress power "to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin," containsan implication that nothing but that which is the subject of coinage, nothing but the precious metals, can ever be declared by law to be money, or to have the uses of money. If by this is meant that because certain powers over the currency are expressly given to Congress all other powers relating to the same subject are impliedly forbidden, we need only remark that such is not the manner in which the Constitution has always been construed. On the contrary it has been ruled that power over a particular subject may be exercised as auxiliary to an express power, though there is another express power relating to the same subject, less comprehensive. (United States vs. Marigold, 9 Howard, 560.) There an express power to punish a certain class of crimes (the only direct reference to criminal legislation contained in the Constitution) was not regarded as an objection to deducing authority to punish other crimes from another substantive and defined grant of power. There are other decisions to the same effect. To assert, then, that the clause enabling Congress to coin money and regulate its value tacitly implies a denial of all other power over the currency of the nation, is an attempt to introduce a new rule of construction against the solemn decisions of this court. So far from its containing a lurking prohibition, many have thought it was intended to confer mpon 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. We do not assert this now, but there are some considerations touching these clauses which tend to show that if any implications are to be deduced from them, they are of an enlarging rather than a restraining character. The Constitution was intended to frame a government as distinguished from a league or compact, a government supreme in some particulars over States and people. It was designed to provide the same currency, having a uniform legal value in all the States. It was for this reason the power to coin money and regulate its value was conferred upon the Federal Government, while the same power as well as the power to emit bills of credit was withdrawn from the States. The States can no longer declare what shall be money, or regulate its value. Whatever power there is over the currency is vested in Congress. If the power to declare what is money is not in Congress, it is annihilated. This may indeed have been intended. Some powers that usually belong to sovereignties were extinguished, but their extinguishment was not left to inference. In most cases, if not in all, when it was intended that governmental powers, commonly acknowledged as such, should cease to exist, both in the States and in the Federal Government, it was expressly denied to both, as well to the United States as to the individual States. And generally, when one of such powers was expressly denied to the States only, it was for the purpose of rendering the Federal power more complete and exclusive. Why, then, it may be asked, if the design was to prohibit to the new government, as well as to the States, that general power over the currency which the States had when the Constitution was framed, was such denial not expressly extended to the new government, as it was to the States? In view of this it might be argued with much force that when it is considered in what brief and comprehensive terms the Constitution speaks, how sensible its framers must have been that emergencies might arise when the precious metals (then more scarce than now) might prove inadequate to the necessities of the Government and the demands of the people—when it is remembered that paper
"Legal-tender" Decision Of 1871.
money was almost exclusively in use in the States as the medium of exchange, and when the great evil sought to be remedied was the want of uniformity in the current value of money, it might be argued, we say, that the gift of power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, was understood as conveying general power over the currency, the power which had belonged to the States, and which they surrendered. Such a construction, it might be said, would be in close analogy to the mode of construing other substantive powers granted to Congress. They have never been construed literally, and the Government could not exist if they were. Thus the power to carry on war is conferred by the power to '•declare war." The whole system of the transportation of the mails is built upon the power to establish post offices and post roads. The power to regulate commerce has also been extended far beyond the letter of the grant. Even the advocates of a strict literal construction of the phrase, "to coin money and regulate the value thereof," while insisting that it defines the material to be coined as metal, are compelled to concede to Congress large discretion in all other particulars. The Constitution does not ordain what metals may be coined, or prescribe that the legal value of the metals, when coined, shall correspond at all with their intrinsic value in the market. Nor does it even affirm that Congress may declare anything to be a legal tender for the payment of debts. Confessedly the power to regulate the value of money coined, and of foreign coins, is not exhausted by the first regulation. More than once in our history has the regulation been changed without any denial of the power of Congress to change it, and it seems to have been left to Congress to determine alike what metal shall be coined, its purity, and how far its statutory value, as money, shall correspond from time to time with the market value of the same metal as bullion. How then can the grant of a power to coin money and regulate its value, made in terms so liberal and unrestrained, coupled also with a denial to the States of all power over the currency, be regarded as an implied prohibition to Congress against declaring Treasury notes a legal tender, if such declaration is appropriate, and adapted to carrying into execution the admitted powers of the Government?
We do not, however, rest our assertion of the power of Congress to enact legal-tender laws upon this grant. We assert only that the grant can, in no just sense, be regarded as containing an implied prohibition against their enactment, and that, if it raises any implications, they are of complete power over the currency, rather than restraining.
We come next to the argument much used, and, indeed, the main reliance of those who assert the unconstitutionality of the legal-tender acts. It is that they are prohibited by the spirit of the Constitution because they indirectly impair the obligation of contracts. The argument, of course, relates only to those contracts which were made before February, 1862, when the first act was passed, and it has no bearing upon the question whether the acts are valid when applied to contracts made after their passage. The argument assumes two things: first, that the acts do, in effect, impair the obligation of contracts, and, second, that Congress is prohibited from taking any action which may indirectly have that effect. Neither of these assumptions can be accepted. It is true that under the acts a debtor, who became such before they were passed, may discharge his debt with the notes authorized by them, and the creditor is compellable to receive such notes in discharge of his claim. But whether the obligation of the contract is thereby weakened can be determined only after considering what was the contract obligation. It was not a duty to pay gold or silver, or the kind of money recognized by law at the time when the contract was made, nor was it a duty to pay money of equal intrinsic value in the market. (We speak now of contracts to pay money generally, not contracts to pay some specifically defined species of money.) The expectation of the creditor and the anticipation of the debtor may have been that the contract would be discharged by the payment of coined metals, but neither the expectation of one party to the contract respecting its fruits, nor the anticipation of the other constitutes its obligation. There is a well-recognized distinction between the expectation of the parties to a contract, and the duty imposed by it. (Apsden vs. Austin, 5 Ad. & Ellis, N. S., 671; Dunn vs. Sayles, Ibid., 685; Coffin i?s. Landis, 10 Wright, 426.) Were it not so the expectation of results would be always equivalent to a binding engagement that they should follow. But the obligation of a contract to pay money is to pay thatwhich the law shall recognize as money when the payment is to be made. If there is anything settled by decision it is this, and we do not understand itto be controverted. (Davies'sReps.,28; Barrington vs. Potter, Dyer, 81, b., fol. 67; Faw vs. Marsteller, 2 Cranch, 29.) No one ever doubted that a debt ot $1,000, contracted before 1884, could be paid by one hundred eagles coined after that year, though they contained no more gold than ninety-four eagles such as were coined when the contract was made, and this not because of the intrinsic value of the coin, but because of its legal value. 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. Nor is this singular. A covenant for quiet enjoyment is not broken nor is its obligation impaired by the Government's taking the land granted in virtue of its right of eminent domain. The expectation of the covenantee maybe disappointed. He may not enjoy all he antici
pated, but the grant was made and the, covenant undertaken in subordination to the paramount right of the Government. (Dobbins vs. Brown, 2 Jones, 75; Workman vs. Mifflin, 6 Casey, 362.) We have been asked whether Congress can declare that a contract to deliver a quantity of grain may be satisfied by the tender of a less quantity. Undoubtedly not. But this is a false analogy. There is a wide distinction between a tender of quantities, or of specific articles, and a tender of legal values. Con tracts for the delivery of specific articles belong exclusively to the domain of State legislation, while contracts for the payment of money are subject to the authority of Congress, at least so far as relates to the means of payment. They are engagements to pay with lawful money of the United States, and Congress is empowered to regulate that money. It cannot, therefore, be maintained that the legal-tender acts impaired the obligation of contracts.
Nor can itbe truly asserted that Congress may not, by its action, indirectly impair the obligation of contracts, if by the expression be meantrendering contracts fruitless, or partially fruitless. Directly it may, confessedly, by passing a bankrupt act, embracing past as well as future transactions. This is obliterating contracts entirely. So it may relieve parties from their apparent obligations indirectly in a multitude of ways. It may declare war, or, even in peace, pass non-intercourse acts, or direct an embargo. All such measures may and must operate seriously upon existing contracts, and may not merely hinder but relieve the parties to such contracts entirely from performance. It is, then, clear that the powers of Congress may be exerted, though the effect of such exertion may be in one case to annul and in other cases to impair the obligation of contracts. And it is no sufficient answer to this to say it is true only when the powers exerted were expressly granted. There is no ground for any such distinction. It has no warrant in the Constitution, or in any of the decisions of this court. We are accustomed to speak for mere convenience of the express and implied powers conferred upon Congress. But in fact the auxiliary powers, those necessary and appropriate to the execution of other powers singly described, are as expressly given as is the power to declare war or to establish uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcy. They are not catalogued, no list of them is made, but they are grouped in the last clause of section eight of the first article, and granted in the same words in which all other powers are granted to Congress. And this court has recognized no such distinction as is now attempted. An embargo suspends many contracts and renders performance of others impossible, yet the power to enforce it has been declared constitutional, (Gibbons vs. Ogden, 9 Wheat., 1.) The power to enact a law directing an embargo is one of the auxiliary powers, existing only because appropriate in time of peace to regulate commerce, or appropriate to carrying on war. Though not conferred as a substantive power, it has not been thought to be in conflict with the Constitution, because it impairs indirectly the obligation of contracts. That discovery calls for a new reading of the Constitution.
"legal-tender" Decision Of 18Y1.
If, then, the legal-tender acts were justly chargeable with impairing contract obligations, they would not, for that reason, be forbidden, unless a different rule is to be applied to them from that which has hitherto prevailed in the construction of other powers granted by the fundamental law. But, as already intimated, the objection misapprehends the nature and extent of the contract obligation spoken of in the Constitution. As in a state of civil society property of a citizen or subject is ownership, subject to the lawful demands of the sovereign, so contracts must be understood as made in reference to the possible exercise of the rightful authority of the Government, and no obligation of a contract can extend to the defeat of legitimate government authority.
Closely allied to the objection we have just been considering is the argument pressed upon us that the legal-tender acts were prohibited by the spirit of the fifth amendment, which forbids taking private property for public use without just compensation or due process of law. That provision has always been understood as referring only to a direct appropriation, and not to consequential injuries resulting from the exercise of lawful power. It has never been supposed to have any bearing upon, or to inhibit laws that indirectly work harm and loss to individuals. A new tariff, an embargo, a draft, or a war may inevitably bring upon individuals great losses; may, indeed, render valuable property almost valueless. They may destroy the worth of contracts. But whoever supposed that because of this a tariff could not be changed, or a non-intercourse act or an embargo be enacted, or a war be declared? By the act of June 28, 1834, a new regulation of the weight and value of gold coin was adopted, and about six per cent, was taken from the weight of each dollar. The effect of this was that all creditors were subjected to a corresponding loss. The debts then due became solvable with six per cent, less gold than was required to pay them before. The result was thus precisely what it is contended the legaltender acts worked. But was it ever imagined this was taking private property without compensation or without due process of law? Was the idea ever advanced that the new regulation of gold coin was against the spirit of the fifth amendment? And has any one in good faith avowed his belief that even a law debasing the current coin, by increasing the alloy, would be taking private property? It might be impolitic and unjust, but could its constitutionality be doubted? Other statutes have, from time to time, reduced the quantity of silver in silver coin without any question of their constitutionality. It is said, however, now, that the act of 1834 only brought the legal value of gold coin more nearly into correspondence with its actual value in the market, or its relative value to silver. But we do not
perceive that this varies the case or diminishes its force as an illustration. The creditor who had a thousand dollars due him on the 31st of July, 1834, (the day before the act took effect,) was entitled to a thousand dollars of coined gold of the weight and fineness of the then existing coinage. The day after he was entitled only to a sum six per cent, less in weight and in market value, or to a smaller number of silver dollars. Yet he would have been abold man who had asserted that, because of this, the obligation of the contract was impaired, or that private property was taken without compensation or without due process of law. No such assertion, so far as we know, was ever made. Admit it was a hardship, but it is not every hardship that is unjust, much less that is unconstitutional; and certainly it would be an anomaly for us to hold an act of Congress invalid merely because we might think its provisions harsh and unjust.
We are not aware of anything else which has been advanced in support of the proposition that the legal-tender acts were forbidden by either the letter or the spiritof the Constitution. If, therefore, they were, what we have endeavored to show, appropriate means for legitimate ends, they were not transgressive of the authority vested in Congress.
Here we might stop; but we will notice briefly an argument presented in support of the position that the unit of money value must possess intrinsic value. The argument is derived from assimilating the constitutional provision respecting a standard of weights and measures to that conferring the power to coin money and regulate its value. It is said there can be no uniform standard of weights without weight, or of measure without length or space, and we are asked how anything can be made an uniform standard of value which has itself no value? This is a question foreign to the subject before us. The legal-tender acts do not attempt to make paper a standard of value. We do not rest their validity upon the assertion that their emission is coinage, or any regulation of the value of money; nor do we assert that Congress may make anything which has no value money. What we do assert is, that Congress has power to enact that the Government's promises to pay money shall be, for the time being, equivalent in value to the representative of value determined by the coinage acts, or to multiples thereof. It is hardly correct to speak of a standard of value. The Constitution does not speak of it. It contemplates a standard for that which has gravity or extension; but value is an ideal thing. The coinage acts fix its unit as a dollar; but the gold or silver thing we call a dollar is, in no sense, a standard of a dollar. It is a representative of it. There might never have been a piece of money of the denomination of a dollar. There never was a pound sterling coined until 1815, if we except a few coins struck in the reign of Henry VIII, almost immediately debased, yet it has been the unit of British currency for many generations. It is, then, a mistake to regard the legal tender acts as either fixing a standard of value or regulating money values, or making that money which has no intrinsic value.
But, without extending our remarks further, it will be seen that we hold the acts of Congress constitutional as applied to contracts made either before or after their passage. In so holding we overrule so much of what was decided in Hepburn vs. Griswold (8 Wall., 603,) as ruled the acts unwarranted by theConstitution so faras they apply to contracts made before their enactment. That case wasdecided by a divided court, and by a court having a less number of judges than the law then in existence provided this court shall have. These cases have been heard before a full court, and they have received our most careful consideration. The questions involved are constitutional questions of the most vital importance to the Government and to the public at large. We have been in the habit of treating cases involving a consideration of constitutional power differently from those which concern merely private right. (Briscoe vs. Bank of Kentucky, 8 Peters, 118.) We are not accustomed to hear them in the absence of a
full court, if it can be avoided. Even in cases involving only private rights, if convinced we had made a mistake, we would hear another argument and correct our error. And it is no unprecedented thing in courts of last resort, both in this country and in England, to overrule decisions previously made. We agree this should not be done inconsiderately, but in a case of such far reaching consequences as the present, thoroughly convinced as we are that Congress has not transgressed its powers, we regard it as our duty so to decide and to affirm both these judgments.
The other questions raised in the case of William B. Knox against Phoebe Lee and Huph Lee were substantially decided in Texas vs. White, (7 Wallace, 700.)
The judgment in each case is affirmed.
[note.—Mr. Justice Bradley concurring, delivered a separate opinion. Chief Justice Chase delivered a dissenting opinion, representing Justices Nelson, Clifford, and Field. The last two also delivered separate opinions. The opinion pronounced Decemberterm, 1869, will be found in McPherson's History of Reconstruction, pages 511-523.]
PEESIDENT GKANT'S CABINET, AND MEMBERS OF THE E0RTY-SEC0ND CONGRESS.
Secretary of State—Hamilton Fish, of New
York. Secretary of the Treasury—George S. Boutwell, of Massachusetts. Secretary of War—William W. Belknap, of
Iowa. Secretary of the Navy—George M. Robeson,
of New Jersey. Secretary of the Interior—Columbus Delano, of
Ohio, vice Jacob D. Cox, of Ohio, resigned
October 30, 1870. Postmaster General—John A. J. Creswell.
of Maryland. Attorney General—George H. Williams, of
Oregon, vice AmosT. Akerman, of Georgia,
resigned January 9, 1872.
Members of Forty-Second Congress.
First Session, March 4, 1871—April 20, 1871. Second Session, December 4, 1871—June 10, 1872.
Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, Vice-President of the United States, and President of the Senate.
George C. Gorham, of California, Secretary.
Maine—Hannibal Hamlin, Lot M. Morrill.
New Hampshire—James W. Patterson, Aaron H. Cragin.
Vermont—George F. Edmunds, Justin S. Morrill.
Massachusetts—Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson.
Rhode Island—William Sprague, Henry B. Anthony.
Connecticut—Orris S. Ferry, William A. Buckingham.
New York—Roscoe Conkling, Reuben E. Fenton.
New Jersey—John P. Stockton, Frederick T. Frelinghuysen.
Pennsylvania—Simon Cameron, John Scott.
Delaware—Thomas F. Bayard, Eli Saulsbury.
Maryland—George Vickers, William T. Hamilton.
Virginia—John F. Lewis, John W. Johnston.*
North Carolina—John Pool, Matthew W. Ransom.f
South Carolina—Frederick A. Sawyer, Thomas J. Robertson.
Georgia—Joshua Hill, Thomas M. Norwood.£
Alabama—George E. Spencer, George Goldthwaite. ||
Mississippi—Adelbert Ames, James L. Alcorn. §
*■ Qualified March 17.1871. f Qualified April 24,1872.
eualified December 19.1871. ualified January 15,1872. I Qualified December 4,1871.