their payment by a definite and specific course of administration of the assets deposited as their security.

To this, then, may it please your Honors, have we come at last, under the operation of the doctrine of "necessity," as a guide to the exercise of constitutional powers. This exactly and rigorously is the issue. It is a direct collision between the legislative will of the State and the legislative will of the Federal Government. It is an issue which cannot be avoided; it has been made inevitable by those who would have it just as it is. It is to be maintained by our learned opponents on the other side, and to be decided upon the consciences of the members of this tribunal.

I pray your Honors further to observe that this is not a collateral and indirect effect of a national policy, operating adversely to the policy of a State, so as to reduce the value of public or private securities. It is a question whether there exists on the part of Congress, under the Constitution of the United States, a paramount authority to affect the subject of tender, the payment of a contract-a paramount authority to affect the discharge and operation of a trust originating under the Constitution and laws of a State, and to be administered by the State as a trustee. That is the issue-whether there exists such paramount authority on the part of Congress as will enable them, notwithstanding anything in the Constitution and laws of a State, to prescribe what shall be payment and discharge of a contract; or to interfere with the operation of a trust, commencing and ending solely under the Constitution and laws of a State.

And here, perhaps, it is my duty to anticipate an argument which I think is the only suggestion that can be resorted to, to show that the issue is not what I have stated it to be. It may, perhaps, be argued that, inasmuch as all that the State has required is that these corporations shall redeem their bills in "lawful money of the United States ;" and that as treasury notes, so called, are now declared by Congress to be lawful money, the banks in the employment of this species of currency, in the redemption of their bills, are within the operation of the State law.

Now, I have to say, at the outset, in reference to the con

struction of the State law, what I hope no one, on or off the bench, will take as in any degree offensive, that I apprehend that an honest judicial mind cannot say to the people of New York, looking at their history, and the history of their constitution and laws, that when they prescribed payment of these bills in "lawful money of the United States," they meant anything on earth but gold or silver. Why, from the year 1787 to the year 1862, no human mind in this country ever dreamed of such a thing as lawful money of the United States being anything but the coin of the realm, with the stamp and impress of the Govern ment upon it; or such foreign coin as might be in circulation here, whose value, according to the Constitution, had been regulated by Congress. During all that period, no man of any political party ever claimed, for any purpose, or under any circumstances, that Congress had power to make a paper money and give it the qualities of money in the payment and discharge of debts.

Therefore, I say, that if we stood on the statute alone, and apart from any provision of the Constitution of the State, the phrase "lawful money of the United States" is capable of rational construction upon no other supposition than that it meant the coin of the United States. The people of New York, when they made that statute, meant no dishonesty; they meant that their banking system should work no dishonesty; they meant the actual straight-forward telling down upon the counter, dollar for dollar of the hard money of the realm. They meant to rest their banking system upon no other basis. Moreover I do most respectfully submit to your Honors, that it is absolutely out of the power of this Court to construe that statute otherwise; for the Constitution of the State requires not only that the Legisla ture shall not sanction or permit a suspension of specie payments by any bank, but it also requires them, in so many terms, to take ample security from every bank that they authorize, for the redemption of their bills in specie. The law must be construed, therefore, in accordance with the Constitution of the State.

The argument on the other side, then, must be that, notwithstanding this provision in the Constitution and laws of the State, notwithstanding the trust with which the State has clothed

itself, to secure to the holders of these bills, in a regular and due course of administration, payment out of the securities thus pledged in the hands of the State, yet, that by some paramount authority of Congress, founded in some part of the Federal Constitution, that body is able to prescribe changes in respect to that trust, and to substitute in the place of that which the Legislature of the State has prescribed, and the people of the State in their sovereign capacity have prescribed—something other than gold and silver.

I submit, then, that I have correctly stated the issue, and that it is not to be made to turn on any broad and fanciful meaning of the phrase, "lawful money of the United States." How, then, shall this issue be met? I answer, by the principles of the Constitution, and by no expediencies or necessities whatsoever. It cannot be that our political system does not contain within itself the means of bringing this pretension of the Federal power to the test of a definite rule.

That system was no accidental arrangement in reference to expediencies of a temporary or of a shifting character. It was a body of fundamental laws, carefully separating the objects of Federal from the objects of State power; and furnishing within itself, as a guide to the judicial mind in all future time, a test by which to ascertain the extent and measure of the authority conferred upon the General Government. That rule, as I shall by and by have occasion to submit to your Honors, requires a special relation between the means that are to be employed to execute any given power of Congress, and the end for which that power is to be exercised.

The issue divides itself into two principal questions, which are substantially stated on the agreed case by the parties, but which I shall submit to the Court in a slightly different phraseology, although it in no respect changes the substance.

First.-Has Congress power to make the paper promises of the Federal Government a legal tender in payment of any debts not due to that Government?

Secondly. If it has this power in respect to any debt not due to the Federal Government, can a bank of this State avail itself

of such an enactment, and tender these Federal paper promises in redemption of its bills; and thus estop the execution of the trust by which the State has secured the redemption of these bills out of a fund pledged for the express purpose by solemn provision of law?

First, as to the general question. And here I beg leave to remind your Honors, that no one pretends that this power is to be found in any of the express terms or provisions of the Constitution. Power to legislate on the subject of tender, or the discharge of contracts, is nowhere to be found in any of the express provisions of the Constitution. Still less is Congress authorized, by any express provision of that instrument, to interfere with the execution or administration of any trust which arises in and under, or is to be executed under, the laws of a State. It is only as an incidental or implied power that this authority is claimed by its advocates.

It is clear, then, that the burthen of establishing its existence is upon them. It is upon them the more especially, because the ordinary presumption in favor of the constitutionality of an enacted law is a very feeble presumption in this case. It is a feeble presumption, not only because some of the best jurists in and out of Congress, before the law was enacted, denied its validity; but because, as I shall maintain, and shall hope to satisfy your Honors, it can be defended only upon a doctrine which removes all limitations whatsoever upon the federal powers, and makes that government absolutely sovereign in all respects, notwithstanding the laws and institutions of the States.

It is no extravagance to say that the grounds on which this authority has been claimed and defended, since the enactment of this law by Congress, such as an overruling public necessity; the right to defend the national life; and the various other sweep. ing doctrines which entirely remove the ordinary judicial distinctions between the powers of Congress and the powers of the States, that all these grounds are of themselves the strongest proofs that the ordinary presumptions in favor of the validity of an enacted law are of very little account in the present instance.

Where, then, is this power to be found in the Constitution? Let us proceed with all the diligence which we can use to endeavor to answer that question. And, in the first place, is it to be found in that clause of the Constitution which confers upon Congress the power "to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin?" The argument which undertakes to deduce the power from this clause of the Constitution, and to apply it to the redemption of their bills by the banks of this State, in my judgment proceeds from premises that are not true to a conclusion that does not follow from the premises.

The premises are, that the phrase "to coin money," includes the power to give the attributes of money to paper. And the conclusion reached from those premises is, that having the power to give the attributes of money to paper, that paper may, notwithstanding and against the will of the State, which has created a trust to be administered to its citizens in a particular way, be introduced into the administration of that trust, and be made a substitute of the thing which the trust required to be paid.

Now, may it please your Honors, in the first place, does this clause of the Constitution, rightly interpreted and understood, embrace any power to give the qualities of money to paper, or embrace any power to create anything as money except coin? This is, of course, a specific question, under our government and institutions. It is not, whether governments in general possess the power to give the attributes of money to paper. It is not whether other governments have exercised such a power in times past, or whether they exercise it now. It is whether this government of the United States, this limited. federal government, with its powers defined in a written constitution, possesses that power, and whether it is embraced in the clause on which I am now commenting.

Now, in considering the meaning and operation of that clause, I hope no one, who has hitherto laid stress on the lexicographic meaning of that word, will consider that I mean any disrespect when I say that I shall expend very little time upon the consideration of the various senses in which the term "to coin" can be used. Ingenious persons, who look into dictionaries and authors in search of the irregular, corrupt, or vicious uses