ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

Go to the New England States this day-go to Boston, enter any shop there, and ask the price of this or that article, and they will tell you, perhaps, two shillings and three pence, which is equal to 37 cents. It took one a long time to learn their one and three pence (25 cents), nine pence (12 cents.) In their idea of money of account, they still count in shillings and pence, six shillings to the dollar, which is their estimate and measure of value; showing simply that when speaking of this subject we must have a little knowledge of what money of account is, and of what the measure of value is. Whenever we speak of the price of a thing, we estimate it by the money of account. So if I want to buy a horse, and $500 is asked as the price of it, do I estimate that sum or the value of the horse by a piece of gold, and say to myself, this horse is worth so large a piece of gold of so many ounces? We do not estimate prices in that way. When we say "a dollar" it is only what I call the third line in the mathematics, the intermediate point of comparison. When I buy a hat for $5, and two pairs of shoes for $5, it is as proper to say that the hat is worth two pairs of shoes, or the two pairs of shoes are worth the hat, as that they are worth five dollars. It is only that we have a third line, the intermediate point of comparrison. And so to this very day in the New England States, after three quarters of a century, they still count in colonial shillings and pence; and so in England before 1816 they counted in pounds, and had no piece of coin representing a pound, nor was it necessary.

MR. CURTIS One of the objects we had in view in the change we made was to have a correspondence between the money of payment and the money of account.

MR. ROELKER: I know that Robert Morris, when that question came up, proposed to retain the money of account, the pounds, and divide it up decimally and seek a unit for the contemplated coinage. The other proposition, which came from Hamilton, and with whom Jefferson coincided, was to have the dollar as the unit of the money of account; inasmuch as in the then state of the country, with so much Spanish and Portuguese money, the people were used to and prepared for that term, and therefore the dollar was taken as the unit of reference. And in 1793, for the first time, Government passed an act that there

after all accounts and books of account in the public offices and in the courts, should be kept in dollars and cents, instead of pounds, shillings, and pence. But for thirty years afterwards, the merchants, in various parts of the country, continued to keep their books in the old way, in pounds, shillings, and pence. This very day go to Canada, and you will find that they do not keep their accounts there in pounds sterling; they go on in their old colonial mode instead of the legal way, because that is their manner of estimating the value of things.

We use with us dollars and cents as the money of account, saying that an article is worth so many dollars and cents, not so many pennyweights or grains of the precious metals. When I buy a book that costs me a dollar, I do not estimate that it is worth 4121 grains of silver. But for the exchange and circulation of commodities, we have a medium of exchange. If I buy a thousand dollars worth of iron, and give my greenbacks for it, and the person from whom I buy the iron takes that money and buys wheat for it, is it not in fact an exchange of wheat for iron, andthe money is only the medium by which this exchange is effected? Suppose I had used gold and silver coin, instead of greenbacks, would it have then been anything more than an exchange of wheat for iron? The money, be it metallic or paper, is only used to effect the exchange, as a wagon is used to transport the articles. If England, or any other party, should send over here one hundred millions of dollars in gold eagles, to be kept, should we be any richer for it? When the gold fever first broke out, there was a very good illustration in the Paris Charivari of the value and use of gold. It represented a man dig. ging in the earth in the gold region of California, and he dug out a large piece of gold. Upon examining it he threw it away angrily, saying he had thought it was a potatoe. He was digging for something to eat, and he could not eat the gold. If you have a hundred millions in gold coin, you cannot eat it, or wear it. It is only fit to pass away for something that you can cat or wear. Paper money can be used for the same purpose, for money is only the instrument to effect the exchange of one commodity for another, and for labor. But, says the respondant, I want gold! gold! gold! I paid you so many ounces of gold, and I want so many ounces of gold in return.

Suppose I owed the honorable gentleman a thousand dollars, and I tendered him ninety-four eagles in gold coin, struck before 1834, which, as regards the quantity of gold contained in them, are equal to one hundred eagles struck since 1834. Would he take it as payment in full? No. He would then bring his action of debt; I should plead my tender and bring the ninetyfour eagles, struck before 1834, into court. Would any court say that I had made a legal tender?

The Court would say to me, You bound yourself to pay a thousand dollars in the lawful money of the United States, and you tendered only $940. Still, according to the gentleman's theory, I had tendered him as much gold as he lent to me.

The venerable blindfolded lady, intended for the goddess of justice, is represented with a pair of scales in her hand; but, surely, this was never intended to signify that she should stand up all the time, weighing in her scales the gold contained in a legal tender. The law and the courts only require debts to be paid in the lawful money of the country, whatever that may be.

A debt is simply a sum of money on contract, and must be distinguished from an obligation to deliver a specific article. But let us inquire how in practical life, in the present state of civilization, debts are paid? I answer by credit; and the defendant and respondent in this case at bar, discharged his obligation to lend us $8,000, by transferring to us so much of his credit. He gave us his check upon the Chemical Bank, thereby transferring $8,000 of his credit there to us, which was put to our credit in our bank. His check was a mere piece of paper, a very indifferent piece of paper, for I certainly have a much better piece of paper, so far as intrinsic value is concerned, in my pocket, to light a candle with. If the gentleman speaks of the intrinsic value of the paper given in exchange, I certainly gave him eight beautifully illustrated pieces of paper for his very indifferent piece. But what gave value to this little piece of paper that he gave us? It was the beautifully executed signature "J. I. Roosevelt." Should the gentleman favor me now with his check, with his beautiful signature to it, and I should go into Wall street, and want to buy gold coin or cotton with it, could I get as much cotton for it as I could be

fore, in 1854? No. Has the gentleman's ability to pay decreased? Is his check not as good as before? Yes; every body will say that it is as good as gold. But still I cannot buy as much cotton with it as I could in 1824, and yet the gentleman's wealth has increased, and his check is worth as much as before. But cotton and gold coin have risen in value. The value of everything depends upon the demand and supplygold has risen in value-Why? because gold is demanded to pay duties with. If the Government, as it has a right to do, should demand that all duties should be paid in tobacco,-an instance which John C. Calhoun cited, and said that the Government, no doubt, had a right to require all duties to be paid in kind; and if so, then it would be the bounden duty of Congress to so regulate it, that it would be uniform throughout the country-suppose that all duties had to be paid in tobacco, should we not have to pay much higher for cigars than we do now? Would not tobacco rise in value to a fearful extent? Gold would become cheaper, and tobacco would rise higher in price. But gold now is demanded for duties. Has not that the effect to make gold higher? What do we want gold for? We do not eat it. It doth not clothe us. We want it to pay duties. with, and to settle the few balances against us abroad. We have coined money since the beginning of the Government until 1860, to the extent of something like $800,000,000, a little less than that amount, and in 1860, as I stated in my argument below, according to the report of the director of the mint, we had only about $275,000,000 in the country. What has become of it? Did we want it? No. We do not keep money as a luxury. If any body should pay $10,000 in gold to your Honors, would you keep it? No; you would get rid of it as fast as you could. Nobody wants money to keep it. It is not made to keep, only to be exchanged for something else. It is a circulating medium. When we say the respondent is worth bis $500,000 or $800,000, do we mean that he has so much gold coin in his vaults and coffers? No; we mean that he has so much property in bonds and stocks, and houses and vessels, or whatever it may be, something that is of value, and the value is only estimated by this unit of money, the dollar.

If the check of the respondent drawn against his credit,

would be of value, is not the check of the Government of still greater value, since it is drawn against sixteen thousand millions of dollars worth of property? and is not each one of us bound to redeem that check of the Government? If we do not, then we should be poor indeed, poor in honor as well as in honesty. But to hasten on. The subject is so broad, that I could speak for hours upon it. I will, however, presently give way to my

learned opponent.

I wish to call your Honors' attention to a few of the passages in the opinions of the Judges. His Honor Judge Peckham seems to think it unnecessary that any express or implied power be delegated by the Federal Constitution to Congress to make legal tender laws; he says:

"As soon as money is coined, it is a legal tender, and that the law merely declared a legal consequence, when it provides that the coins and money shall be a legal tender."

Although every statute passed in regard to money, is careful to say that it shall be a legal tender, the learned Judge says it is a mere legal inference-that it was not necessary to so provide by statute. In answer to this statement of Judge Peckham, I have only to say, that it seems to be his legal opinion, in regard to the half dollars struck since 1853, that it was not necessary for Congress to say that those half dollars, and all coins less than a dollar in value, should be a legal tender only for all sums less than five dollars, and no more. According to Judge Peckham's opinion, that was entirely unnecessary, for as soon as money is coined he says, it is a legal tender. It would follow then, that all such coins are a legal tender for a thousand dollars, or for any other amount, although that money had been debased; for the learned Judge says, that they were a legal tender as soon as they were coined. Then certainly they may strike any coins, of any amount of alloy. They may make coins of so little value that they would be worth but little, and the mere striking of them would make them at once, ipso facto, a legal tender according to his argument.

But Judge Ingraham, on the other hand, says, it is the States alone that have the right to make a legal tender, because the tenth section says that the States shall make nothing but gold and silver a legal tender. He grants that it is true that from

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »