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used by the banks to redeem their bills. The banks of this State hold millions of the Public Debt, the interest upon which is to be paid in specie by the Government. The Government is to receive duties on imports in specie; thus Congress has provided the means by which to pay the interest on the public. debt.

The People and not the banks are to pay these duties; so, that should the Court hold that the banks may redeem their bills circulated as money, in paper money, it leaves the People without the means of obtaining coin; except by purchase in the market, at a premium fixed by these monied corporations themselves-such purchase, perhaps to be made with the bills of those banks now refusing to redeem in specie.

Should the Court hold that the banks can redeem their own bills in legal tender notes, such decision at the same time gives the banks legal power to fix their own price on specie. For the banks control. Wall street is "King"-and not "cotton" in this matter.

The Legislature, at its last session, was unable, or at least did not, stop the speculation in gold. Let the Court now say that the banks have no need for specie to redeem their bills, and it becomes an article of merchandise in their hands.

My eighth proposition is, that the right to redeem their notes in a currency of less value than gold and silver, is an assump tion on the part of the banks, directly in opposition to the intention of the law, requiring them to file security to redeem their bills in specie, and wholly unwarranted, and a fraud upon the People who have received their bills, as being equal in value to gold and silver coin.

I have thus gone hastily over the points I have made in this case. I am well aware of the magnitude and importance of the matter at issue before the Court. I have not attempted to grapple with the great constitutional questions which are presented in the Roosevelt case, and which is to be argued immediately after this shall be closed. That there is a wide distinction between the two cases I have always believed, and I hope the Court will not permit the two to become so connected that it shall fail to have that distinction ever before it.

Let me say, in conclusion, that in deciding this case, the

Court is bound to look at the interests of the People of this State, with the same regard for their rights at this time, as if the Government was not involved in the terrible war which is upon us. The laws are not changed; the rights of the people are unchanged; banking institutions are the same today as they were before the rebellion; their rights and their obligations to the State and People remain the same.

And what right has the Court to change the law or the Constitution at this time more than at any other? Neither the statutes nor the Constitution has lodged any such discretion in the Court. There can be no mistake, no ambiguity about the law. Every word is plainly written, and every sentence has an unmistakable meaning. The edict has gone forth. "The banks shall redeem their bills issued as money in specie," and no power under heaven, but the People of this State, has the legal right to change it. Why should the banks be permitted to break their obligations? Individual debts or contracts are held inviolate. Neither "war, pestilence, nor famine," will absolve individuals from the performance of all their obligations. to the State and Government.

This Court is sitting here to-day under and by virtue of State laws, and the question before it to decide really depends upon State laws for its solution. The whole question is one of dollars and cents between the People and the banks of this State; and eyery word which will be uttered in regard to the great questions of State and the powers of the general Government will be really foreign to the issue. Patriotism on the part of monied institutions is, indeed, a new thing in the history of mankind. But it will be found that every dollar the banks have loaned the general Government has been at a rate of interest over seven per cent.; and now, if they can make fifty per cent. by refusing to redeem their bills in specie, I suppose that, upon the same principle, their love of country will be unfathomable! And, on the contrary, I suppose that the bill-holder of one of these banks who demands its payment in specie as he is entitled to do by the Constitution-and receives instead a paper promise to pay of fifty per cent. less value on the dollar than specie, he should be stamped with a want of patriotism, or, perhaps, disloyalty.

Let me say to the Court, that this case will be regarded for all time as the highest authority of the State, and that upon its decision depends the rights of the People and the banks-for I have no thought, no idea, that the general Government will feel in the least aggrieved or affected by any opinion this Court may arrive at (so far, at least, as the banks are connected with it), and will not interfere with the decision of this Court.

Should the Court hold that the banks may redeem in legal tender notes, there will be no power to

"Alter a decree established!

'Twill be recorded for a precedent;

And many an error, by the same example
Will rush into the State: it cannot be!"

ARGUMENT

OF

GEORGE T. CURTIS, Esq.,

Of Counsel for the Appellant.

Mr. CURTIS said:

دو

It cannot be necessary for me to entreat your Honors to "hear me for my cause." What that cause is, and its importance, you already perceive. I am to speak in it on behalf of a public officer of the State, whose duty it is to vindicate its sovereign right of legislation in one of the most important aspects in which that right can be viewed. But great as is the responsibility devolving upon those who are to maintain the rights of the State in this controversy, I frankly say to your Honors that there is but one thing the influence of which I fear. It is the tendency, now so rife among us, to measure constitutional powers by the opinions of men respecting public necessities. Into that field I shall not at present enter.

I have been accustomed, through my whole professional life, to look to the text of the Constitution, to the known historical facts in which it had its origin, to the known purposes for which it was established, and to the settled course of judicial decisions under it, for the rules of its interpretation; and I cannot look for those rules in the conflicting judgments of men as to what the exigencies of finance at a particular time may or may not have required.

I am to speak, moreover, to a bench of Judges whose lives are passed in the investigation of legal truth; who know that the law is a science in what concerns the public rights of gov ernments, as it is in what concerns the private rights of in

dividuals; and whose steadfast and instinctive pursuit of justice will not be likely to lead them aside into the paths of political expediency. Yet you will not feel, I am sure, that my anxiety is misplaced. Look for a moment, I beg your Honors, at the issue that is here really made up. If there be one attribute of sovereignty more clear, unquestionable, and now unquestioned, than another, it is the power to create banking and other corporations, and to prescribe the law of their existence. No one will now undertake to say that this power is not possessed by the people of New York in full sovereignty. Here is one of these corporations; creature of the State; born of its sovereign legislative will; and having impressed upon it, as the law of its existence, at the time of its creation, that it shall redeem its paper circulation in gold and silver. It now comes into Court, holding an Act of Congress in its hand, and says to you the judicial ministers of the State, bound by your high relation to the State and by your oaths of office to administer her laws, and to uphold her sovereignty to the full extent of its just limits-?his corporation now says to you: "I, the creature, am absolved from my obligation to obey the law imposed upon me by my creator; that law is now a dead letter; henceforth I redeem my circulation in the irredeemable paper promises of the Federal Government."

But this is not all. The people of New York, for their own protection, and for the protection of others beyond their borders who might chance to hold these bills, prescribed to this corporation, as the law of its existence, that before it should exercise the faculty of issuing bills for circulation, it should deposit in the hands of the State certain public securities, to be administered by the State as a trust fund for the payment of these bills, dollar for dollar, fraction for fraction, to the last item of indebtment, according to the specie standard. The Corporation now comes into Court, and calls upon this bench to restrain the sale of these securities, notwithstanding the solemn command of the statute of the State that they shall be sold under the circumstances which now exist in this case. At the same time, no change whatever has taken place in the legislation of the State in this respect. The faith of the State still stands, as it must forever stand, pledged to the holders of these bills, to secure

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