Chincanery - Value - Money - Worth - Tupper Saussy - Roger Sherman - Misc Essays and Historical Notes
One of the greatest contradictions in value ever witnessed -- since the introduction of paper as value -- can be seen in the denominating of gold and silver in fiat paper currencies. Imagine if you will, a tangible, time honored store of real value such as gold and silver, suddenly having no value other than that for which a set amount of worthless paper can be used to purchase it. Suddenly the thing that had no value before, now becomes valuable because up is now down, and down is now up, "with all the world looking on and seemingly none the wiser for what just occurred".
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.82 - p.83 -- Appendix II.
The money of the constitution
In the interpretation of words a cardinal rule is, to conform to usage. In 1787 every English dictionary defined "money" as metallic coin; and therefore as metallic coin, it must be interpreted in the clause which authorizes the legislature of the United States to borrow money. A second cardinal rule of interpretation is, where a word is used in the same document more than once, it is to be interpreted in every instance as bearing the same meaning, unless there is an obvious and incontrovertible reason to the contrary. The constitution of the United States authorizes their legislature to coin money; and of the meaning of the word in that clause, no doubt can exist.
The one Article in the US Constitution drafted solely by Roger Sherman was Article 1 Section 10, noting that in Clause 1 “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility", which means what it say's it means, that states cannot print paper that They arbitrarily assign a value to, for purposes of distributing into the general population, as bills to be used within that state, in exchange for labor, goods and services, nor can they coin money, IE,. they cannot manufacture gold and silver coins, and that PAPER cannot be used as Tender in payment of debts, period!
So what are we to make of such direct and fixed language regarding the issuing of paper currencies in the US Constitution? Another violation you say? Another example of an out-dated document you say? What does it matter now, in today's world you say? "Let's be perfectly clear and blunt about this". The US Constitution was written for a people that generally had enough reading and writing skills at the time to understand, and comprehend when it was being violated by the Organ it was meant to tie down; the implications for which that the relationship between the US Government, The States, and the people who created them, could be one of harmony, peace, and prosperity, "as long as the creation did not operate outside of its designated jurisdiction, and tightly defined authority". "So much for those people, and that time period, knowing that today's Americans are as far removed and different to Them, as a Lion is to an Ant".
Roger Sherman was the only person to sign all four documents of the American Revolution: the Continental Association of 1774, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States.
Article 1 Section 8 Clause 5. The Congress shall have Power To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; In other words, money is synonymous with coin, not paper.
by F. Tupper Saussy
“Roger Sherman never said a foolish word in his life.” Such was Thomas Jefferson's opinion of the author and proponent-in-chief of the section in the United States Constitution that says “No State shall make any Thing but Gold and Silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”
In A Caveat Against Injustice, Roger Sherman explains the circumstances that made this law imperative. It's the American classic on coin, currency, and circulation. If you study it carefully, you'll understand how the kind of money we use today is the same sort of scam that caused the Constitutional framers to put their country on gold and silver.
When I reprinted Caveat in the early 1980s it had been forgotten to the ages. There were only two known copies known in existence— one in anonymous private hands and the other in the Beineke Rare Book Library at Yale University. READ TUPPER SAUSSY'S ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION (1982)
I thought this odd. College bookstores were brimful of textbooks on Karl Marx and Keynesian central banking, but void of anything about the monetary system established in law by the U.S. Constitution. It remains so to this day, and I'm afraid it will for the foreseeable future, now that central banking has been provided a popularly-supported war for which to emit unprecedented amounts of credit to unprecedented masses of happy borrowers.
The sad truth is that the constitutional monetary system Roger Sherman labored so hard to establish (by unanimous vote of the convention, incidentally) has never been amended out of the Constitution. It lost effect because the Constitution can be amended by custom and usage if government (always the prime beneficiary of monetized borrowing) graciously looks the other way.
To the extent that we participate in an economic system the Constitution was framed to prevent, we are not a law-abiding nation. This in itself sufficiently explains why law enforcement has become so unreliable, and will only worsen until the lessons of A Caveat Against Injustice are taken to heart by a new generation of Americans.—FTS (Nov. 29, 2001)
Tupper Saussy's Original Introduction to A Caveat Against Injustice
I.
A Living Voice
Any student of the economic system of the United States ought to be familiar with United States monetary law. Since all laws in this country must flow in pursuance of the United States Constitution, the student should base his study of monetary law on the economic provisions contained in the Constitution.
It's not widely known that the Constitution deals with economics. Indeed, most people are surprised to learn that the sole purpose of the Constitutional Convention, as described by Alexander Hamilton in a report to Congress in 1786 recommending that there be a convention, was to take into consideration the trade and commerce of the United States.
What was wrong with trade and commerce in the United States? They were being twisted all out of shape by an inflating balloon of an elastic currency, the very stuff the Federal Reserve provides today.
Our first constitution, the Articles of Confederation (1781), was severely deficient in the economic rights department. The Articles empowered Congress to emit a paper currency, while allowing the states to retain their power to make this paper a legal tender in payment of debts, that is, to compel people to use the stuff. The result? A warping of personal and business relations in the United States that drove George Washington (and God knows how many other folks) to depression and nervous exhaustion. Suffering the compounded agonies inflicted by a paper monetary system of uncontrollable value fluctuations. Washington wrote these dismal words to James Madison on the eve of the Convention:
The wheels of government are clogged, and we are descending into the vale of confusion and darkness. No day was ever more clouded than the present. We are fast verging into anarchy and confusion.
The deliberate purpose of the 1787 Constitutional Convention was to stop the ravages of a fluctuating medium of exchange by obligating government to maintain a reliable medium of exchange. President Andrew Jackson validated this fact in his Eighth Annual Message to Congress, December 5th, 1836, just 47 years after the Constitution was ratified by the states.
...It was the purpose of the convention to establish a currency consisting of the precious metals. These were adopted by a permanent rule excluding the use of a perishable medium of exchange, such as of certain agricultural commodities recognized by the statutes of some States as tender for debts, or the still more pernicious expedient of paper currency.
The "permanent rule excluding the use of the pernicious expedient of paper currency" is an exquisitely framed piece of legislative machinery. In article I Section 8, the Framers gave Congress the power
...to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standards of Weights and Measures.
In Article I Section 10, the Framers denied the states any power to coin and issue money. More importantly, they denied the states the power to ordain-in payment of debts-the use of anything but the money Congress was empowered to coin. The substance of that coin is named in the denial:
No State shall coin Money, emit Bills of Credit, make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in payment of Debts.
Through the Framers, then, the People of the United States appointed the states to be custodians of the American monetary system. If Congress ceased coining gold and silver, causing gold and silver coin to stop circulating, the states would be unable to compel their citizens to pay any debts, public or private. It was the responsibility of an ever-vigilant union of states to keep Congress coining gold and silver, thereby preserving interstate commerce, preserving the very Union itself.
The power the states had reserved under the Articles of Confederation, the power to make anything a legal tender, is a marvelous power indeed. The power to compel people to accept something of no intrinsic value in exchange for something of value is the power to rob people of their property "secretly," as John Maynard Keynes put in the 1920's, "and unobserved."
The United States Constitution is one of the few written compacts between people and government that actually dragged the power out into the open for all to see and condemn. In the 44th Federalist Paper, James Madison eloquently explained why the States were giving up their power to compel citizens to use either federal or state paper money:
The loss which America has sustained from the pestilent effects of paper money on the necessary confidence between man and man, on the necessary confidence in the public councils, on the industry and morals of the people, and on the character of republican government, constitutes and enormous debt against the States chargeable with this unadvertised measure, which must long remain...an accumulation of guilt, which can be expiated no otherwise than by voluntary sacrifice on the alter of justice of the power which has been the instrument of it.
The states' voluntary sacrifice hastily rescued our forefathers from the vale of confusion and darkness, unclogged the wheels of government, brightened the day, and restored peace and order. A mere nine months after the "permanent rule excluding the pernicious expedient of paper currency" was ratified by the states, the December 16th 1789 edition of The Pennsylvania Gazette was able to say:
Since the federal constitution has removed all danger of our having a paper tender, our trade is advanced fifty percent. Our monied people can trust their cash abroad, and have brought their coin into circulation.
And in June, 1790, a little more than a year after ratification, a much happier George Washington was able to write his friend the Marquis de LaFayette that
Our revenues have been considerably more productive than it was imagined they would be. I mention this to show the spirit of enterprise that prevails.
II
"The writers of the constitution knew exactly what they were doing when they wrote in Article I Section 10 paragraph 1 'No state shall... make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. ' People able to barter with gold and silver coin control government and are free. Loss of the right to trade in gold and silver coin enslaves people to the creators of psychological 'money.'" —Merrill Jenkins, Sr., The Greatest Hoax on Earth
"The voice of legislators is a living voice." —10 COKE 101 (England)
The Framer who perfected the design of our country's monetary system was a man who had spent most of his life struggling with—and publicly condemning—a fluctuating medium of exchange.
That man was Roger Sherman (1721-1793), a delegate from Connecticut. It was he who, on August 28th, 1787, proposed that the states sacrifice the power to participate in paper money schemes. When it was counter-proposed that the states be allowed by Congress make other things than gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, we're told by James Madison that Sherman exclaimed,
"We are making these measures absolute. This is a favorable crisis for crushing paper money. If the consent of the Legislature could authorize emissions of it, the friends of paper money would make every exertion to get into the Legislature in order to license it."
The reader of Madison's Notes on the Debates of the Convention would naturally infer that Sherman was prejudiced against paper money. But where is any material explaining why Sherman disliked paper money? None can be found. There's a black hole in history where Roger Sherman's monetary philosophy should be.
It's been estimated that there are more than 500 million copies in print of Karl Marx's Manifesto of the Communist Party and Das Kapital. How many billions of impressions of Marx's monetary philosophy have been etched into human consciousness nobody can calculate. He is celebrated as the founding father of the Communist movement and is regarded as one of the greatest thinkers of all time not only in the communist countries, but also in most American colleges and universities, where he is Required Reading in many sociology, history, economics, and philosophy courses.
Karl Marx (1818-1883), of course, was a friend of paper money. He held that a central bank empowered to emit paper money and compel the people to use it was essential to government's control of individual property.
We don't have to estimate how many copies of Roger Sherman's only book there are in existence. There are considerably fewer than 500 million. In fact, there are only two. Only two copies of A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE left in the world. Think about it. Five HUNDRED MILLION that say paper money is good vs two that say paper money is evil.
Admitted, other people have written that paper money is evil. But they weren't the Framer of the United States Constitution's monetary clauses.
One of the two copies of A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE was in the collection of the late Senator George Frisbie Hoar (1826-1904), lawyer, representative, and grandson of Roger Sherman. In this copy, according to A Dictionary of Books Relating to America, From Its Discovery To The Present Time (New York:1891), Sherman had scratched through the pseudonym Philoenomos (Greek for "lover of good law") on the title page and written "By Roger Sherman." Beneath his signature, Sherman had inscribed the book "For Mr. Edward Wigglesworth." The only other original copy sleeps in the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale, the university of which the author served as Treasurer from 1765 to 1776.
The Spencer Judd edition of A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE is the first known public presentation of this vital book after more than 200 years of undeserved obscurity.
Now, I'm not suggesting that A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE might have been suppressed by those who prosper from people's unawareness of their economic rights secured by the Constitution, but it is strange that the only comprehensive indictment of paper money written by the Framer of the Constitution's guarantee of individual economic security should be allowed to dwindle down to two copies. Two copies from oblivion! This, mind you, is the only book written by the only man to sign all four of our most precious political documents-The Continental Association of 1774, The Declaration of Independence, The Articles of Confederation, and The United States Constitution. Do the Guardians of our American Heritage think it's not worth remembering?
First Published in 1752, A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE is an economics treatise anyone can understand, in spite of its period literary style. Considering the stature of the author, it's probably the most important economics treatise ever written. For all the influence of Marx, Adam Smith, Ricardo, Bastiat, Engels, Keynes, Samuelson, Hayek and Friedman may exert over a student's monetary thinking, not one of them has enjoyed the privilege of standing on the floor of a legislative body, proposing his philosophy, and having it enacted into law ratified by the people, in the way Roger Sherman has.
If the voice of the legislator is a living voice, and if the legislator's intent constitutes the law, then the student of United States monetary law must listen carefully to Roger Sherman's voice, and be guided by the intentions it expresses. For A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE, word for word, is the very soul of the supreme law governing the money and the property of the the people of the United States. It removes the danger of judicial speculation as to the intent of the Constitution's monetary provision, being the only authoritative description by a Framer of the monetary system the Framers wished to avoid, and why; and of the system they were advancing, and why.
III
"A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house. " ~Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 13:53
"Mr. Sherman exhibits the oddest shaped character I ever remember to have met with. He is awkward, un-meaning, and unaccountably strange in his manner. But in his train of thinking there is something regular, deep, and comprehensive; yet the oddity of his address, the vulgarisms that accompany his public speaking, and that strange new England cant which runs through his public and private speaking make everything that is connected with him grotesque and laughable; - and yet he deserves infinite praise;- no Man has a better Heart or a clearer Head. If he cannot embellish he can furnish thoughts that are wise and useful. He is an able politician, and extremely artful in accomplishing any particular object;- it is remarked that he seldom fails." ~Major William Pierce (Georgia), Characters in the Convention, 1787.
A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE reflects events in Roger Sherman's personal life.
There is on file in the Connecticut State Library in Hartford an action in which Roger, then 30 years old, and his brother William sued James Battle for paying a debt to their shop in New Milford, Connecticut, in depreciated paper currency.
Over a period of 15 months in 1750-51, Battle had charged "divers wares & merchandizes" amounting to 129 pounds of what the Shermans assumed were pounds of Connecticut "Old Tenor" currency, a stable currency whose value was well-preserved by taxation's taking it out of circulation. But Battle assumed the debt was denominated in pounds of ever-depreciating Rhode Island currency, tendered same, and the Shermans took a beating in the payment and sued for recovery for loss of depreciation.
Sherman wrote in CAVEAT:
...to impose Rhode Island Bills of Credit in Payments for Debts in this Colony when the Creditor never agreed to take them, and that without any Allowance for the Depreciation, would be to take away Men's Estates and wrong them of their just and righteous Dues without either Law or Reason.
The record of Sherman vs Battle states:
And now the Defendant Comes into Court and pleads and Says that he owes nothing to the Plaintiffs in money of the Colony of Connecticut in Manner and form of the Plaintiffs in their Declaration have supposed and therefore puts himself on the Country.
And the Plaintiffs say the Plea of the Defendant above pleaded is insufficient in the Law.
And the Defendant says his plea is sufficient, etc.
The outcome of Sherman vs Battle was a victory for paper money, because James Battle won. Why did he win? Battle "put himself on the Country." which is a way of saying that he pled "the law of the land" or " custom." Custom, in Sherman's day, meant the colonial common law: the way things were done in early America. Sherman's position was that Battle's pleas was insufficient in English Common Law, big L, under which paper currency could not pay a debt unless specifically provided for in a contract.
Without thinking much about it, the people of Connecticut obeyed their timeworn custom of allowing the currencies of the various Colonies to circulate promiscuously with one another, heedless of differences in their real purchasing power, very much as the people of our states did in the 1960's when irredeemable Federal Reserve notes began circulating promiscuously with redeemable Fed notes, United States notes, Treasury notes, and Silver Certificates.
When Federal Reserve notes were first emitted in 1914, their stated rate was one dollar of gold or lawful money for each dollar promised. Today (1982), a one-dollar Federal Reserve note will purchase less than 1/10th of a dollar of gold or lawful money. Roger Sherman's condemnation of Rhode Island bills applies with equal force to today's Federal Reserve notes:
And since the Value of the Bills of Credit depend[s] wholly on the Rate at which they are stated and on the Credit of the Government by whom they are emitted and that being the only Reason and Foundation upon which they obtained their first Currency and by which the same has been upheld ever since their first being current, and therefore when the Publick Faith and Credit of such Government is violated, then the Reason upon which such Bills obtained their Currency ceases and there remains no Reason why they should be any longer current.
In Sherman's day, a traveling man could make a fortune hopping across the State line, buying many cheap Rhode Island pound bills of credit ("or rather of no Credit," growled Sherman in A CAVEAT) with his few fine Connecticut pound bills, return to Connecticut and enjoy an enormous increase in purchasing power by paying in Rhode Island bills. (Motion is traditionally associated with cheating: is not Mercury, the Roman god of travel, also the god of commerce and thievery?) And all the while, the people—stuck in the habit of dealing with paper images—let their value slip through their fingers without complaint.
Sherman addressed the law of the land, or custom, in A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE:
If what is us'd as a Medium of Exchange is fluctuating in its Value it is no better than unjust Weights and Measures, both which are condemn'd by the Laws of GOD and Man, and therefore the longest and most universal Custom could never make the Use of such a Medium either lawful or reasonable.
Losing the Battle case did not quell Roger Sherman's struggle for lawful and reasonable money. Quite the contrary, it convinced him that somehow the colonial custom of passively participating in a monetary system of fluctuating value, suffering the losses without complaint, drowning the pain in vice and sermons, had to be altered. A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE closes with a petition to the General Assembly of Connecticut asking that Rhode Island bills of credit be forbidden from circulating within the state borders and
...whether it would not be very much for the Publick Good to lay a large Excise upon all Rum imported into this Colony or distilled herein, thereby effectually to restrain the excessive use thereof, which is such a growing Evil among us and is leading to almost all other Vices. And I doubt not but that if those two great Evils that have been mentioned were restrained we should soon see better Times.
Twenty-four years later, Roger Sherman was to help write the Declaration of Independence, which ingeniously described the destructive social consequences of man's tendency to hang on to bad habits:
All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
The Common Law, the great river of habit flowing down from the remote English past, has always held that the only money with which debts can be paid is metals of intrinsic value. But the Common Law had been shunted off course in the American colonies by a confusion of statutes which served legislators and their supporters at the expense of the people in common. This needed correction, redirection. The widespread failure of an elastic currency made necessary the forging of a brand new custom (call it the resumption of an old, if you like). The habit of using materials of intrinsic value—gold and silver coin—must be introduced into the American consciousness, must be secured as "law of the land;" otherwise, Sherman wrote in CAVEAT,
...instead of having our Properties defended and secured to us by the Protection of the Government under which we live, we should be always exposed to have them taken from us by Fraud at the Pleasure of other Governments, who have no Right of Jurisdiction over us.
Of course, Sherman might have been specifically referring to the government of Rhode Island. But would he not have condemned the assumption of jurisdiction over us by any government not created by constitution? Recall House Banking Committee Chairman Wright Patman's warning a decade ago that we were being ruled by another government:
In the United States today we have in effect two governments.... We have the duly constituted Government...Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution.
Doesn't Congressman Patman's testimony make it clear that the Federal Reserve banking system is our "other Government" to which we are "always exposed" to having our properties "taken from us by Fraud"?
I am loyal to a duly constituted Government. But why should I pledge loyalty to an independent, uncontrolled, and uncoordinated government not obliged to take a Constitutional oath, a government "who (has) no Right of Jurisdiction over us"?
When the Constitution was ratified on the first Wednesday in March, 1789, Roger Sherman accomplished his lifetime quest for an unalterably secure monetary system consisting of gold and silver coin. According to the 2nd Section of Article VI of the Constitution,
This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
On that first Wednesday in March 1789, the monetary system advocated in A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE became a vital organ in the Supreme Law of the Land. No one thereafter could "put himself on the country," saying "we've always used this stuff for money," and hope to get a state court to ordain the use of paper money as tender in payment of debts. nor could a state court say "You must pay in paper because we've always used this stuff for money."
Not even Congress could compel the states to traffic in irredeemable notes, for Sherman in Convention had insisted that the prohibition be "absolute, instead of...allowable with the consent of the Legislature of the U.S."
Our economic right to circulating gold and silver, coined by Congress has never been amended out of the Constitution. There are only two ways this right can be denied to us: our voluntarily surrendering it, which is what most of us have done up to now; or its being taken away from us by a tyrannical force applied by our fellow countrymen, in our own land, against us.
IV
"If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve! We are absolutely without a permanent monetary system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible-but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and the defect remedied soon."
—Robert H. Hemphill, former Credit Manager, The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta,in the Foreword to 100% MONEY, by Irving Fisher
"If Congress won't keep its part of the Constitutional bargain and coin money of gold and silver like Article 1, Section 8 Clause 5 commands,there's no way my court can require anyone to pay fines. I'm not here to protect certain people's investments. I'm here to carry out the mandate of the U.S. and the Kansas Constitutions." —The Honorable Larry Moritz Municipal Judge, Spearville, Kansas, 1981
If Ratification of the Constitution was the Grand Finale in Roger Sherman's career, certainly A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE was the Overture, and both are made of the same thematic material: a quest for economic security in the Law. You could have sat down with Sherman at the close of the Convention and asked him what the purpose of Article 1 Section 10 Paragraph 1 was and he would have handed you a copy of this little book.
Yet, solid as they are, Sherman's ideas on money were ridiculed by many contemporaries as crankish. We've seen how they were rejected by the court in in New Milford. Who but a fool would dare suggest that the states make nothing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts when there was so little gold and silver to be had? Surely, Sherman must have heard "There's not enough gold to go around, is there?" as often as he heard "Since all the gold's in Europe, what will prevent the Europeans from flooding the market, and getting our property for nothing?"
Those questions were answered by history: it is a matter of record that after no state could make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, the United States became the world's largest depository of gold and silver while simultaneously becoming the most productive nation in the history of the world. Roger Sherman had predicted events with perfect accuracy in the closing paragraphs of CAVEAT:
So long as we part with our most valuable Commodities for such Bills of Credit as are no Profit; but rather a Cheat, Vexation and Snare to us, and become a Medium whereby we are continually cheating and wronging one another in our Dealings and Commerce, and so long as we import so much more foreign Goods than are necessary, and keep so many Merchants and Traders employed to procure and deal them out to us...I say as long as these Things are so we shall spend great Part of our Labour and Substance for that will not profit us. Whereas if these Things were reformed, the Provisions and other Commodities which we might have to export yearly, and which other Governments are dependant [sic] upon us for, would procure us God And Silver abundantly sufficient for a Medium of Trade. And we might be as independent, flourishing and happy a Colony as any in the British Dominions.
Compare this prediction with President Washington's jubilant address to both houses of Congress on December 8th, 1795, six years after the states had been forced onto a strict diet of gold and silver coin:
Our agriculture, commerce, and manufacture prosper beyond former example...Every part of the Union displays indications of rapid and various improvements, and with burdens so light as scarcely to be perceived; with resources fully adequate to our present exigencies; with governments founded on the genuine principles of rational liberty, and with mild and wholesome laws; is it too much to say, that our country exhibits a spectacle of national happiness never surpassed, if ever before equaled?
Whether you're a student of monetary law or just a participant in what Charles Riely calls "the Culture of Freedom," I pray that you'll read Roger Sherman's lost masterpiece time and time again, marking it, inwardly digesting it.
I hope you'll show it to people who have to be shown things before they'll believe. I hope you'll use it to demonstrate to skeptical neighbors as well as attorneys, both official and private, that it was the resolute intent of the Framers of the Constitution to do away with a fluctuating medium of exchange for the very reasons Roger Sherman sets down in his wondrous little document.
In A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE, our forgotten Framer is warning us (caveat is Latin for "warning") that the form of money Congress (but no state legislature) has declared "legal tender," this monetized debt issued and regulated by "Governments who have no Right of Jurisdiction over us," is evil; and let me remind you that "evil" means "morally bad or wrong; wicked; malevolent; sinful; causing an undesirable condition, as ruin, injury, pain, harmful, injurious, undesirable, infamous; that which is destructive or corruptive." If the money—"that whereby other things are valued"—is evil, how can the things it values be good?
Indeed, an evil medium of exchange colors everything evil. Just look around.
What passes for money in 1982 [2003] is as evil, as unpredictable, as damnable as Rhode Island Bills of Credit in a 1751 Connecticut dry goods store.
Today's official medium of exchange is "unjust weights and measures, both which are condemn'd by the Laws of GOD and Man." It is money deliberately designed to "take away Men's Estates and wrong them of their just and righteous Dues without either Law or Reason." All these charges are proved every minute of every day.
The remedy is contained in the Law.
By Law, the states have no Constitutional authority whatsoever to participate in a monetary system comprised of bills not redeemable unit for unit in gold and silver coin. In fact, any state court, judge, or ministerial officer who participates in a compulsory fluctuating medium of exchange is "obliging Men to part with their Estates for that which is worth nothing in it self."
The pages of THE MAIN STREET JOURNAL [published by Tupper Saussy between 1981 and 1987] tell monthly of the thousands of Americans who have begun withholding public dues to their states, countries, and municipalities until such time as Congress once again coins that which the states can make tender in payment of debts. Although many officials have respected this claim of right, it saddens me to report that others have worked extreme hardship on citizens who assert economic rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Why? Do these officers feel threatened? Are they frightened? If they are merely skeptical that the Constitution was designed to crush a monetary system identical to ours today, they need A CAVEAT AGAINST INJUSTICE .
As they read, they will hear the convincing voice of the Legislator himself declare that a monetary system comprised of a fluctuating medium of exchange such as ours today is "an Iniquity not to be countenanced, but rather to be punished by the Judges."
It is a living voice of the man whom Thomas Jefferson declared "Never said a foolish thing in his life."
-Frederick Tupper Saussy
Sewanee, Tennessee, April, 1982
A Caveat Against Injustice or, An Inquiry into the Evils of a Fluctuating Medium of Exchange
WHEREIN is considered, whether the Bills of Credit on the Neighboring Governments, are a legal Tender in Payment of Money, In the COLONY of CONNECTICUT for Debts due by Book, and otherwise, where the Contract Mentions only Old-Tenor Money.
by Roger Sherman
author of Article 1 Section 10 of the United States Constitution, “No State shall make any Thing but Gold and Silver Coin a tender in Payment of Debts”
Original publication, 1752
§1 Forasmuch, as there have many Disputes arisen of late concerning the Medium of Exchange in this Colony, which have been occasioned chiefly by Reason of our having such large Quantities of Paper Bills of Credit on some of the Neighbouring Governments, passing in Payments among us, and some of those Governments having issued much larger sums of Bills than were necessary to supply themselves witha competent Medium of Exchange, and not having supplied their Treasuries with any Fund for the maintaining the Credit of such Bills; they have therefore been continually depreciating and growing less in their Value, and have been the principal Means of the Depreciation of the Bills of Credit emitted by this Colony, by their passing promiscuously with them; and so have been the Occasion of Much Embarrasment and Injustice, in the Trade and Commerce of the Colony, and many People and especially Widows and Orphans have been great Sufferers thereby.
§2 But our Legislature having at length taken effectual Care to prevent further Depreciation of the Bills of this Colony, and the other Governments not having taken the prudent Care, their Bills of Credit are still sinking (1) in their Value, and have in Fackt sunk much below the Value of the Bills of this Colony.
§3 Yet some People among us, by long Custom, are so far prejudiced in Favour of a sinking Medium, and others not being really sensible of the true State of the Case, are inclined to think that Bills of Credit on the neighbouring Governments ought to be a legal Tender in Payments in this Colony for all Debts due by Book and otherwise wheere there is no special contract expressly mentioning some other Currency, and others being of a different Opinion, the Disputes have been carried on so far, as to occasion some Expence in the Law, and may be likely to occasion much more, unless prevented by those Prejudices being some way removed. And since it is a a Cause wherin every one is more or less interested, I have ventured to shew my Opinion, with a sincere Desire to have Peace and Justice maintained and promoted in the Colony. Not desiring any Person to approve of my Observations any farther than he finds them agreeable to the Principles of Justice and right Reason.
THE CASE STATED
§4 Suppose a Man comes to a Trader's Shop in this Colony to buy Goods, and the Trader sells him a certain Quantity of Goods and tells him the Price is som many Pounds, Shillings and Pence, (let it be more or less) to be paid at the Expiration of one Year, from that Time, and the Man receives the Goods but there is nothing said either by Seller or Buyer, what Currency it is to be paid in, but the Goods are charged according to the Value of Bills of Credit Old Tenor on this Colony.
§5 Now I Query what the Creditor has a Right to demand for a Debt so contracted; or what the Debtor can oblige him to accept in Payment?
§6 The Creditor says, that the Debt being contracted in the Colony of Connecticut, he ought to have what is known by the Laws of said Colony to be Money: And that he has no Right to demand any thing else.
§7 The Debtor says, That Bills of Credit on the neighbouring Governments have for many Years passed promiscuously with the Bills of Credit on this Colony as Money in all Payments, (except special Contracts) and that People in general where the Contracts ly at large have expected, and do still expect, that any of the Bills of Credit on any of the Governments in New-England, that have obtained a Currency in this Colony will answer in Payment, and in as much as the Creditor did not give him any Notice to the contrary, when he bought the Goods, therefore he thinks that such Bills of Credit ought to be accepted in Payment for the aforesaid Debt.
§8 And altho' there is no particular Statute in this Colony, that such Bills of Credit shall be a legal Tender in Payments of Money: Yet the Practice has been so universal for so long a Time, adnd the Creditor himself has both received and pass'd them as Money constantly without making Exceptions against them 'till this Debt was contracted, and for many Years all Demands on Book Debts have been for Old Tenor Money indifferently, without Distiction of Colonies, and Judgements in all Courts have been given thereon accordingly: And any of the aforesaid Bills of Credit have pass'd in Payment to satisfy all Judgements, so obtain'd and this universal Custom, the Debtor saith, ought to be esteemed as common Law and ought not without some special Reason to be set aside, and that in this Case there is nothing special; and therefore the Creditor ought not to make Demand or obtain Judgement different from the common Custom of the Colony.
§9 In Answer to this the Creditor saith, that altho' Bills of Credit on the neighbouring Governments have for a Number of Years been pass'd and receiv'd in Payments: Yet it has been only by the voluntary Consent of the Persons receiving them, and not because they were under any Obligation to receive them; and that it is no Argument that a Person shall be obliged to receive any Species where it won't answer his End, because in Time past he has receiv'd it when it would answer.
§10 And the Creditor furthur saith, that such Bills of Credit are of no intrinsick Value, and their Extrinsical Value is fluctuating and very uncertain, and therefore it would be unjust that any Person should be obliged to receive them in Payment as Money in this Colony, (since neither the Colony nor any of the Inhabitants thereof are under any Obligation either to Refunds said Bills or to maintain the Credit of them) for Money ought to be something of certain Value, it being that whereby other Things are to be valued. (2)
§11 And I think it is a Principle that must be granted that no Government has Right to impose on its Subjects any foreign Currency to be received in Payments as Money which is not of intrinsick Value; unless such Government will assume and undertake to secure and make Good to the Possesor of such Currency the full Value which they oblige him to receive it for. Because in so doing they would oblige Men to part with their Estates for that which is worth nothing in it self and which they don't know will ever procure him any Thing.
§12 And Rhode-Island Bills of Credit have been so far from being of certain Value and securing to the Possessor the Value that they were first stated at, that they have depreciated almost four seventh Parts in nine Years last past, as appears by their own Acts of Assembly.
§13 For in the year 1743, it appears by the Face of the Bills then emitted that Twenty-seven Shillings Old-Tenor was equal to one Ounce of Silver. And by an Act of their General Assembly pass'd in March last, they stated Fifty-four Shilling Old-Tenor Bills equal to one Ounce of Silver, which sunk their Value one half. And by another Act in June last, (viz. 1751) they stated Sixty-four Shillings in their Old-Tenor Bills equal to one Ounce of Silver. And by another Act in August last they gave Order and Direction to the Courts in that Colony to make Allowance to the Creditors in making up Judgement from Time to Time as the Bills shall depreciate for the Future, which shews that they expect their Bills of Credit to depreciate for the Future.
§14 And since the Value of The Bills of Credit depend wholly on the Rate at which they are stated and on the Credit of the Government by whom they are emitted and that being the only Reason and Foundation upon which they obtained their first Currency and by which the same has been upheld ever since their first being current and therefor e when the Publick Faith and Credit of such Government is violated, then the Reason upon which such Bill obtained their Currency ceases and there remains no Reason why they should be any longer current.
§15 And this I would lay down as a Principle that can't be denied that a Debtor ought not to pay any Debts with less Value than was contracted for, without the Consent or against the Will of the Creditor.
§16 And the Creditor further saith, that his accepting Rhode-Island Bills of Credit when they stood stated equal to Silver at Twenty-seven Shillings an Ounce, can be no Reason that he should receive them at the same Value when they are stated equal to Silver at Fifty-four Shillings an Ounce, and still to receive them at the same Rate when they are so reduced down that Sixty-four Shillings is equal to but one Ounce of Silver, and whoever does receive them so must not only act without, but against Reason.
§17 And the Debtor can't possibly plead without any Truth that he expected to pay in Rhode-Island Bills of Credit at their present Value and under their present Circumstances, (any Debts contracted before the aforesaid Acts of Rhode Island were published) because there was no such Thing (as those Bills are under their present Circumstances) existing at the Time of Contract, for as was observ'd before, the Value of such Bills of Credit depend wholly upon the Rate at which they are stated and on the Credit of the Government by whom they are emitted, and a Bill of Credit for the same Sum that is stated equal to Silver at Twenty-seven Shillings an Ounce, must be of more than double the Value of one stated equal to Silver at Sixty-four Shillings an Ounce if the Credit of the Emitter may be depended on: But if the Emitter's Credit can't be depended on then neither of the Bills aforesaid are of any Value, because it is evident that no Bills of Credit have any Value in themselves, but are given to secure something of intrinsick Value, to the Posessor.
§18 So that the Arguments draw from Custom are of no Force, because the Reasons upon which that Custom were grounded do now cease.
§19 I grant that if any Thing whose Value is intrinsical and invariable the same should obtain a Currency as a Medium of Exchange for a great Number of Years in any Colony, it might with some Reason be urg'd that it ought to be accepted in Payments for Debts where there is no special Agreement for any other Species. [It is a rule of Common Law that in the absence of a special agreement to receive bills, the right to value for value applies.]
§20 But if what is us'd as a Medium of Exchange is fluctuating in its Value it is no better than unjust Weights and Measures, both which are condemn'd by the Laws of GOD and Man, and therefore the longest and most universal Custom could never make the Use of such a Medium either lawful or reasonable.
§21 Now suppose that Gold or Silver Coines that pass current in Payments at a certain Rate by Tale [ “By tale” means “by count.” The root of the word “teller.”] should have a considerable Part of their Weight filed or clipp'd off will any reasonable Man judge that they ought to pass for the same Value as those of full Weight?
§22 But the State of R...I...d Bills of Credit is much worse than that of Coins that are clipp'd, because what is left of those Coins is of intrinsick Value: But the General Assembly of R...I...d having depreciated their Bills of Credit have thereby violated their Promise from Time to Time, and there is just Reason to suspect their Credit for the Future for the small Value which they now promise for said Bills, and they have not only violated their Promise as to the Value, pretended to be secured to the Posessor by said Bills; but also as to the Time of calling them in and paying the same, they have lengthened out the Time Fifteen Years.
§23 So that if the Posessor must be kept out of the Use of his Money until that Term is expired (and the Bills secure nothing to him sooner.) One Ounce of Silver paid down now, would be worth more than Seven pounds Ten Shillings in such Bills of Credit computing the Interest at 6 per Cent per Annum.
§24 These Things considered, can any reasonable Man think that such Bills of Credit (or rather of no Credit) ought to be a legal Tender in Payment of Money in this Colony for Debts, for which the Debtor received Species of much more Value than those Bills provided the Creditor could get the full Value of them in Silver that they are now stated at.
§25 For it must be remembered that according to the State of the Case now in Question the Goods were charged according to the Value of Old-Tenor Bills of this Colony. Wherefore upon the whole it appears that it would be evidently unjust to impose Rhode-Island Bills of Credit in payment for such a Debt, or any other in this Colony, unless the Creditor obliged himself by a special Agreement to receive them in Payment.
§26 And if he had agreed to receive them in Payment for Debts contracted any Time between last March and June it would be unjust to oblige him to take them without three Shillings on the Pound Allowance, for the General Assembly of Rhode-Island depreciated them so much in June below both their current and stated Value in March preceding.
§27 And to oblige People to receive them without such Allowance in this Colony; would be, to more dishonest than they are in Rhode-Island Colony for they are obliged by Law to make Allowance for the Depreciation.
§28 But in as much as we are not under the Jurisdiction of Rhode-Island Government and therefore can take no Benefit by equitable Acts, I suppose that according to the Rules of the Law, upon a Contract made in this Colony for the Payment of Bills of Credit on the Colony of Rhode-Island or any of the neighbouring Governments,
§29 if the Debtor could not produce such Bills under the same Circumstances that they were at the Time of Contract, the Courts would assess Damages for Connecticut Money, according to the Value of such Bills at the Time of Contract.
§30 And the Reason is, because if on the one Hand all such Bills should be called in and burnt between the Time of Contract and the Time of Payment it would be unreasonable to oblige the Debtor to an impossibility, and on the other Hand if there should between the Time of Contract and the Time of Payment be an Act pass'd that all such Bills should be brought into the Treasurer to be redeem'd by a certain Time or else be Outlawed and rendered of no value and that Time should be expired before the Time of Payment, or if by an Act of Assembly they should be depreciated and sunk one half or two thirds of their Value, it would be unreasonable that the Creditor should be thereby defrauded of his just Due and lose so much of his Estate. [This is why the tender provision, Article 1 Section 10, also denies the states power to impair the obligation of contracts.]
§31 But to impose Rhode-Island Bills of Credit in Payments for Debts in this Colony when the Creditor never agreed to take them, and that without any Allowance for the Depreciation, would be to take away Men's Estates and wrong them of their just and righteous Dues without either Law or Reason.
§32 And instead of having our Properties defended and secured to us by the Protection of the Government under which we live; we should be always exposed to have them taken from us by Fraud at the Pleasure of other Governments, who have no Right of Jurisdiction over us.
§33 And according to this Argument, if Rhode-Island General Assembly has been pleased last June to have stated their Old-Tenor Bills equal to Silver at Forty-eight Pounds Twelve Shillings an Ounce, instead of Sixty-four Shillings, and to have cut off the Value of them Eighteen Shillings on the Pound, instead of Three Shillings, all Creditors in this Colony would thereby have been necessitated to lose Ninety Pounds out of every Hundred Pounds of their Debts which were then out standing, for if they could take away one Sixth Part of their Value and reduce them so much below the Old-Tenor Bills of this Colony and the Creditor be notwithstanding obliged to receive them without Allowance, by the Rule they might have taken away three Quarters of Nine Tenths or indeed the whole, and the Creditor have had no more Remedy than he has now. [ An accurate description of today's monetary process. The federal government (debtor) borrows from the people (creditor) to the extent the people are willing to lend. What the people will not lend, the federal government then borrows from the Federal Reserve system. The government's debt increases the supply of circulating debt money, causing a reduction of the purchasing power of the funds in the public's hands.]
§34 And the Estates of poor Widows and Orphans must according to this Principle in the same unjust Manner be taken away from them and given to others that have no Right to them, (for what the Creditor loses in this way the Debtor gains because the more the Bills of Credit depreciate the less Value the Debtor can produce them for) and according to the Debtor's Arguement the Executive Courts in this Colony must give Judgement in Favour of all this Fraud and Iniquity at least, 'till there is some special Act of Assembly to order them to the contrary; [Executive courts or courts of equity, have power to fashion a remedy where some exists in the law. In the absence of laws defining lawful tenders, the courts consitently found in favor of bills of credit. Roger Sherman was to live to legislate the "Acts of Assembly" that ordered them to the contrary. That Act was Article 1 Section 10 Paragraph 1 of the United States Constitution.] but I believe that every honest Man of Common Sense, upon mature Consideration of the Circumstances of the Case, will think that this is an Iniquity not to be countenanced, but rather to be punished by the Judges.
§35 But in Answer to what is said concerning Demands being made for Old-Tenor Money indifferently and the Courts giving Judgement accordingly. The Creditor saith that Phrase in all Demands made in this Colony ought to be understood to be the Old-Tenor Money of this Colony, and no other, for there never was any Law in this Colony that Bills of Credit on the neighbouring Governments should be a legal Tender in Payments of Money, and I have observed before that it would be unreasonable, that any such Foreign Currency should be imposed as Money, and the same Phrase is us'd in taxing Bills of Cost in the Executive Courts, but it is understood to be the Old-Tenor Money of this Colony only, for a Thousand Pounds in Bills of Credit on the neighbouring Governments would not be sufficient in the Law to satisfy a Bill of Cost of Twenty Shillings Old-Tenor.
§36 And the General Assembly of this Colony have sufficiently declared that they don't Esteem such Bills of Credit as Money, and that no Person ought to be obliged to receive them as such. In that, they themselves will not receive them for their Wages, neither do they oblige any other Person whose Fees or Wages are stated by Law to receive them, but have made Provision how they shall be paid exclusive of such Bills.
§37 And as to the Objection that they have been receiv'd in Payment to satisfy all Judgements given as aforesaid, the Creditor faith, that it was only by the same reasons that they should be received now at the same Value as Bills of Credit on this Colony that there was formerly because it is evident that there is now a real Difference in their Values.
§38 For by a Law of the Province of the Massachusets-Bay, their Bills of Old-Tenor are stated equal to Silver at Fifty Shillings an Ounce and Seven Shillings and Six Pence are equal to One Shilling Proclamation Money, and the Executive Courts in this Colony reckon Eight Shillings Old-Tenor Bills of this Colony equal to One Shilling Proclamation Money which is equal to Silver at Fifty-four Shillings Old-Tenor an Ounce.
§39 And by an Act of Rhode-Island General Assembly Sixty four Shillings of their Old-Tenor Bills is stated equal to one Ounce of Silver, at which Rate nine Shillings and Six pence is equal to but One Shilling Proclamation Money, whereas three Years ago the Bills of Old-Tenor on all the three Governments aforesaid were of equal Value.
§40 And since it appears, that there is such a Difference in the stated Value of the aforesaid Bills of Credit, no Man can with any Propriety be said to make them all without Distinction, a Standard to value Things by; for a Man could afford to sell any Goods or Merchandize for a less Sum in Old-Tenor Bills of the Massachusets-Bay, than for the Old-Tenor Bills of this Colony and he could afford to sell Goods for a less Sum by 15 per Cent for the Old-Tenor Bills of this Colony, than for the Old-Tenor Bills on Rhode-Island Colony.
§41 And to say that an Accompt [account] is charged in Old-Tenor Money indifferently of this and the neighbouring Governments, is to say that 7s.-6d. and 8s. and 9s.-6.d are one and the same Sum, or that there is no Difference between Fifty and Fifty-four, or between Fifty-four and Sixty-four Q.E.D.
§42 And since it appears that it would be evidently absurd to make a Demand for old-Tenor Money indifferently of this and the neighbouring Governments, it follows that all Demands made for Old-Tenor Money in this Colony must be for the Money of this Colony exclusive of the Old-Tenor of the neighbouring Governments, or else for the Old-Tenor Money of some one of the other Governments exclusive of the Old-Tenor of this and the rest.
§43 And since nothing but a special Contract can intitle any Person to demand the Money of any other Government, for a Debt contracted and demanded in this Colony: It necessarily follows, that all Demands for Debts due by Book, where the Contract lyes at large must be for the Money of this Colony only.
§44 What I would be understood to mean by Old-Tenor Money of the Colony of Connecticut is, whatsoever is established by Law in said Colony to pass as, or in Lieu of Money, rated according to its Value in Old-Tenor Bills on said Colony, and I supposed that the Words (Old-Tenor) when us'd in Contracts are universally understood to be intended only to assertain the Value of the Sum to which they are affixed and they must be so understood when the Executive Courts tax Bills of Cost in Old-Tenor Money, for they have no Right neither do they mean to exclude Bills of the New-Tenor, or any of those Coins established by Law (to pass in Payment for Fees) from being a sufficient Tender in Payment of such Costs.
§45 And now I have gone through with what I first proposed, But perhaps some, may be ready to say, that we are sensible that it is of bad Consequence to have a fluctuating Medium of Exchange, but what can be done to Remedy it?
§46 I answer take away the Cause, and the Effect will necessarily cease. [Article 1 Section 10 Paragraph 1 took away the cause. Just as Sherman predicted, the effect promptly ceased.]
§47 But it may be further objected, that if it were not for the Bills of Credit on the neighbouring Governments, we should have no Money to Trade with, and what should we do for a Medium of Exchange? or how could we live without? [People who have never studied money ask the same question today.]
§48 To this I answer, that if that were indeed the Case, we had better die in a good Cause than live in a bad one. But I apprehend that the Case in Fact is quite the reverse, for we in this Colony are seated on a very fruitful Soil, the Product whereof, with our Labour and Industry and the Divine Blessng thereon, would sufficiently furnish us with and procure us all the Necessaries of Life and as good a Medium of Exchange as any People in the World have or can desire.
§49 But so long as we part with our most valuable Commodities for such Bills of Credit as are no Profit; but rather a Cheat, Vexation and Snare to us, and become a Medium whereby we are continually cheating and wronging one another in our Dealings and Commerce.
§50 And so long as we import so much more foreign Goods than are necessary, and keep so many Merchants and Trader employed to procure and deal them out to us: Great Part of which, we might as well make among ourselves; and another great Part of which, we had much better be without, especially the Spiritous Liquors of which vast Quantities are consumed in this Colony every Year, unnecessarily to the great Destruction of the Estates, Morals, Health and even the Lives of many of the Inhabitants.
§51 I say so long as these Things are so we shall spend great Part of our Labour and Substance for that which will not profit us.
§52 Whereas if these Things were reformed, the Provisions and other Commodities which we might have to export yearly, and which other Governments are dependant upon us for, would procure us Gold and Silver abundantly sufficient for a Medium of Trade. And we might be as independent, flourishing and happy a Colony as any in the British Dominions.
§53 And with Submission I would humbly beg Leave to propose it to the wise Consideration of the Honourable General Assembly of this Colony; whether it would not be conductive to the welfare of the Colony to pass some act to prevent the Bills last emitted by Rhode-Island Colony from obtaining a Currency among us.
§54 And to appoint some reasonable Time (not exceeding the Term that our Bills of Credit are allowed to pass) after the Expiration of which none of the Bills of Credit on New Hampshire or Rhode-Island, shall be allowed to pass in this Colony, that so People having previous Notice thereof may order their Affairs so as to get rid of such Bills to the best Advantage that they can before the Expiration of such Term.
§55 And whether it would not be very much for the Publick Good to lay a large Excise upon all Rum imported into this Colony or distilled herein, thereby effectually to restrain the excessive use thereof, which is such a growing Evil among us and is leading to almost all other Vices.
§56 And I doubt not but that if those two great Evils that have been mentioned were restrained we should soon see better Times.
FINIS
Complete Text of Article 1 Section 10 of the US Constitution
Clause I
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
Clause II
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
Clause III
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
Coinage Clause Assesment by Todd Zywicki
Congress's power to coin money is exclusive: under Article I, Section 10, the states are not permitted to "coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; [or] make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts...." Whereas the prohibitions on the states are clear and detailed, Congress's grant of power under the Coinage Clause is open-ended.
Nonetheless, certain elements are clear. First, Congress is granted the authority to "coin money," which authorizes Congress to coin money from precious metals such as gold and silver. Under the Articles of Confederation, the power to coin money was a concurrent power of Congress and the states. To create a more standardized monetary system and reduce the costs of running mints, the Constitution granted this power to Congress exclusively. The elimination of the states' power to coin money and the exclusive grant to Congress provoked controversy because the power to coin money was traditionally understood as a symbol of political sovereignty. Second, Congress is empowered to regulate the value of the coins struck domestically and to set the value of foreign coins. Under the Articles, Congress held the former power but not the latter. The Constitution gave both powers to Congress to encourage domestic and foreign commerce by preventing the states from attaching disparate valuations to circulating coins.
Beyond these simple issues, however, the scope of the federal government's powers under the Coinage Clause is unclear. In particular, although the Coinage Clause empowers Congress to coin money from precious metals, it is not clear whether the federal government could also issue paper money. Linguistic and conceptual usage during the Founding era distinguished between several different concepts: the power to "coin" specie money (i.e., money backed by gold or silver), the power to borrow money through the issuance of interest-bearing "notes," and the issuance of "Bills of Credit." Unlike coined money, whose value was inherent in the metal that composed the coin, and unlike "notes" that accrued interest, a bill of credit was non–interest-bearing paper money issued on the good credit of the United States with no tangible backing in precious metal.
Under the Articles of Confederation, both the federal and state governments were guilty of rampant inflationary issuance of bills of credit to finance the Revolutionary War. In response to the revolutionary history, Article I, Section 10, of the Constitution expressly prohibits the states from issuing bills of credit. With respect to Congress's power, however, the issue is not as clear. At the Constitutional Convention, it was proposed to give the federal government the power to "emit bills on the credit of the United States," but the language was defeated as being too prone to abuse. As a result, the Constitution's monetary clauses expressly grant Congress the power to coin money and to borrow money by issuing "notes" (i.e., interest-bearing government bonds), but not to issue bills of credit. Given the Framers' general hostility to paper money (James Madison, for instance, bemoaned its "pestilent effects" under the Articles), it is likely that the Framers' intended to prohibit the federal government from issuing bills of credit, just as they expressly barred the states from doing so. Moreover, the Constitution itself created a government of enumerated powers; thus, absent an express grant, Congress lacked the power to act. In fact, both those who spoke for and those who spoke against the proposed language to grant this power to the federal government understood that striking the language amounted to a prohibition on Congress's power to issue paper money.
The monetary system that prevailed throughout most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries up until the Civil War comprised a hodgepodge of different types of money. Circulating money consisted of specie, coins minted by the government; privately minted coins; certain foreign coins; and paper banknotes issued by state-chartered private banks and backed by those institutions. Congress regulated the weight of gold and silver required to be contained in coins, but these ratios were often manipulated for political purposes. There were also several private mints, which stamped coins whose value reflected their intrinsic weight in specie. The dominant form of circulating money for most of this period was currency issued by state-chartered private banks and redeemable in gold or silver from the banks. Privately stamped "token" money, often made of copper, also circulated as an instrument for low-value exchange.
In general, the federal government did not issue fiat money (paper money not backed by specie) prior to the Civil War. Issuances were usually short-lived and were intended to be temporary solutions for government finance needs during a war or to shore up the bank system during a crisis. They were receivable for payment of government obligations and taxes, but none of these issuances were declared legal tender for private debts, although they did circulate for private transactions to some degree. Issuances usually were interest-bearing and of relatively large denominations that discouraged the circulation of the notes as money. The federal government issued large denomination interest-bearing notes at the outset of the War of 1812, but subsequent issuances declined in denomination and did not pay interest. Interest-bearing notes also were issued in response to the Panic of 1837. Notwithstanding the Framers' opposition to paper money and principles of constitutional interpretation that suggest that Congress is barred from issuing paper money, in Veazie Bank v. Fenno (1869), the Supreme Court held that the federal government's issuance of bills of credit to fund government operations was a valid exercise of the Necessary and Proper Clause.
To fund the Civil War, Congress also passed the Legal Tender Act of 1862. Unlike earlier issuances that were used to pay government obligations (as well as the paper money issued by the Confederate government), Civil War "greenbacks" (for which redemption in gold was "postponed") were for the first time declared legal tender for all debts, public or private. Even if the federal government had the authority to issue bills for payment of government obligations, it was a distinct question whether the federal government could also force private individuals to accept them for private contracts, an issue specifically withheld in Veazie Bank.
The Framers believed that in prohibiting the authority of the federal government from issuing bills of credit, they also were prohibiting their recognition as legal tender by definition. Moreover, they also separately and expressly barred the states from recognizing anything as legal tender other than gold or silver, which was generally understood as further evidence of the Framer's hostility to legal tender laws. Even those at the Constitutional Convention who supported Congress's power to issue bills of credit opposed granting the power to declare them legal tender.
In a series of nineteenth-century cases dubbed The Legal Tender Cases, the Supreme Court addressed the federal government's power to order its bills of credit to be accepted as legal tender for all debts, public and private. In Hepburn v. Griswold (1870), the Court held it a violation of the Obligation of Contract Clause to retroactively alter contract terms by permitting payment in "greenbacks" of an obligation incurred in gold dollars. Greenbacks were not immediately redeemable in gold. Following a dramatic change in membership, however, just one year later in the Knox v. Lee (1871), the Court expressly overruled Hepburn and upheld the Legal Tender Act as applied to both prospective and retrospective debts. Pointing to the crisis occasioned by the Civil War, Knox upheld the power to declare paper money to be legal tender. In Julliard v. Greenman (1884), the Supreme Court extended Knox, upholding the validity of legal tender laws during peacetime. The Court held that the federal government's monetary power was inherent in its sovereignty; thus it need not be enumerated in the Constitution. Justice Stephen Field's blunt dissent declared, "If there be anything in the history of the Constitution which can be established with moral certainty, it is that the framers of that instrument intended to prohibit the issue of legal tender notes both by the general government and by the States; and thus prevent interference with the contracts of private parties." The recognition of Congress's expansive discretion on monetary issues in The Legal-Tender Cases was later used to support the federal government's invalidation of gold clauses in private contracts in the 1930s.
State Coinage by David F. Forte
"Bills of Credit" was the generic name for various forms of paper money not backed by gold or silver (known as "specie"). Up until near the end of the Revolution, the states had managed, as they had when they were colonies, the issuance of paper money as a means of stimulating and cooling the economy, not unlike the practice of the modern Federal Reserve. After issuing a currency to increase investment, the colony or state would later call in, or "sink," the currency by levying taxes payable in that particular issue. The colony would then issue a new currency (sometimes overlapping with the collection of the previous one) to begin (or maintain) the cycle again. Inevitably, currencies became depreciated, and the complexities of determining who owed how much in which currency to whom confounded transactions and the courts. See Deering v. Parker (1760).
During the latter half of the eighteenth century, Parliament laid increasing monetary regulations on the colonies until 1764, when, as part of its program of centralizing control in London, it put a complete ban on making bills of credit legal tender. During the Revolution, the states began issuing paper currencies again, having a somewhat better record in financing the war than Congress had. After 1783, however, specie dried up in a popular rush to purchase imported goods, and the states' currency issues exacerbated the serious depression of 1784. In early 1787, Massachusetts, which had resisted currency issues, was faced with Shays's Rebellion, whose partisans demanded new currency. In Philadelphia, the Framers were determined to put an end to the practice that they believed had contributed to so much economic and political dislocation. Rhode Island, a major issuer of paper money, refused to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention precisely because it feared monetary reform.
At the Convention, the delegates found a proposal to allow the states to issue bills of credit with the approval of Congress not stringent enough, and James Wilson and Roger Sherman successfully moved to insert the current language. In the ratifying conventions, the Anti-Federalists quickly saw what was afoot. The states could no longer debase the currency with new issues of paper tender. Luther Martin asserted that the states would no longer be able "to prevent the wealthy creditor and the monied man from totally destroying the poor though even industrious debtor." After ratification, the full force of the constitutional changes soon came to fruition; Alexander Hamilton pushed through a program by which the federal government absorbed all previous federal and state debt, established a national bank, and levied new tariffs and internal taxes.
The need for circulating currency, however, did not abate. Soon, private and state chartered banks were issuing bank notes redeemable in specie. States still could not enter the monetary field directly. In Craig v. Missouri (1830), the Supreme Court struck down state loan offices that had issued loan-office certificates, but in Briscoe v. Bank of Kentucky (1837), the Court upheld the constitutionality of bank notes issued from a state-chartered bank because they were not formally issued by the state. By the time of the Civil War, there were more than 1,600 state-chartered banks in the country. With never enough specie to back the notes, their value fluctuated widely. In order to control these problems and support the adoption of a federal currency, the Congress levied a ten percent tax on state bank notes. After the Supreme Court upheld the tax in Veazie Bank v. Fenno (1869), state bank notes began their journey to extinction. State banks then turned to more modern financial devices, such as deposit accounts and checks, to stay in business.
Borrowing Clause by Claire Priest
The Congress shall have Power To...borrow Money on the credit of the United States....Article I, Section 8, Clause 2
The power to borrow money is essential to the existence and survival of a national government. In the Founding era, political leaders expected that in peacetime the Congress would craft the federal government's budget so that revenues equaled or surpassed expenditures. Indeed, the Treasury Department strictly complied with a policy of earmarking all revenues for particular government programs. Nonetheless, the nation could not successfully defend itself militarily without the power to borrow quickly and extensively when the need arose. The Framers therefore drafted the Borrowing Clause without an express limitation.
The Borrowing Clause, however, has a practical corollary. The terms upon which a nation could borrow money depended upon its credit standing. George Washington's Farewell Address captures the general sentiment of the times:
As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible: avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.
Although Federalists and Republicans agreed on the need to maintain the public credit, they diverged considerably on how the borrowing power should be implemented. Indeed, the core differences in the visions of the Federalists and Republicans in the Founding era relate to contrasting views of this power. Alexander Hamilton sought to assure a strong central government by interpreting the Borrowing Clause as authorizing Congress to charter the First Bank of the United States (established in 1791), which maintained federal control over the federal reserves and issued debt instruments that circulated like money. Hamilton viewed large federal issues of debt instruments as an essential stimulant to commerce, providing a source of capital to a capital-poor society, and equally important for revenue collection purposes. The Constitution, however, did not expressly authorize Congress to charter corporations, and the constitutionality of the bank was widely debated.
Thomas Jefferson dismantled much of Hamilton's program. To the Jeffersonian Republicans, a balanced budget reflected a popular desire to limit the size and power of the federal government and to protect states' rights. Jefferson repealed Hamilton's internal taxes (which provided security for the federal debt) and appointed Albert Gallatin as Secretary of the Treasury with a mandate to pay down the federal debt. With a few exceptions, subsequent administrations also prioritized balancing the federal budget, and Andrew Jackson successfully paid down the federal debt in 1834.
Wartime exigencies and economic crises led the country toward the modern interpretation of the Borrowing Clause. A financial emergency that threatened national security during the War of 1812 led to the bipartisan acceptance of the need for federal government control of its reserves through the Bank of the United States, which was held constitutional in Justice John Marshall's expansively written McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). With respect to a federal currency, the Report of the Committee of Detail (debated at the Constitutional Convention) gave Congress the power to "borrow money, and emit bills on the credit of the United States." The delegates voted to strike the power to "emit bills," which strongly suggests that Congress was not authorized to borrow by means of a paper money, although it is clear that interest-bearing debt instruments were permissible. The Union's financial crisis during the Civil War, however, led to the attempt by the federal government to issue and make legal tender a paper-money currency, which was held constitutional in the Legal Tender Cases (1871). Financial problems during the Great Depression led Congress to define what constitutes legal tender. In 1933, a congressional joint resolution prohibited the enforcement of gold clauses in both contracts between the government and individuals and in private contracts, thereby making Federal Reserve notes the exclusive legal tender. The Supreme Court held the resolution constitutional in The Gold Clause Cases (1935).
Legal disputes dealing with the Borrowing Clause today involve two issues. The most litigated issue involves the principle of intergovernmental-taxation immunity. The Supreme Court has held that the Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2) prohibits state and municipal governments from directly or indirectly taxing the interest income on federal government debt and thereby interfering with the federal government's power under the Borrowing Clause. See State ex rel. Missouri Insurance Co. v. Gehner (1930).
The clause also implicitly requires Congress to maintain the public credit. The Supreme Court has invoked the clause in treating the government like a private party in its contractual dealings and in vesting Congress with the power to contract against subsequent repudiation or impairment of its obligations by future Congresses even in the exercise of independent substantive powers authorized under the Constitution. In Perry v. United States (1935), the Court cautioned that the power to borrow money is a power vital to the government, upon which in an extremity its very life may depend. The binding quality of the promise of the United States is of the essence of the credit which is so pledged. Having this power to authorize the issue of definite obligations for the payment of money borrowed, the Congress has not been vested with authority to alter or destroy those obligations.
In United States v. Winstar Corp. (1996), the Court held, among other things, that contractual obligations of the government would be enforced unless doing so blocked the exercise of one of the government's essential sovereign powers.
Because the Constitution imposes no express limits on the borrowing power, the political branches must decide the issue. As in the Founding era, the question of the extent to which the government should run deficits and maintain a large federal debt are at the essence of contrasting views about the proper scope of the federal government.
"Paper money" "Coin," and "Bills of credit" in American Founding Documents
The United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.
Clause 1. The Congress shall have Power . . .
Clause 5. To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
Clause 6. To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
Section 10, Clause 1. No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
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George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.82 - p.83 -- Appendix II.
The money of the constitution.
In the interpretation of words a cardinal rule is, to conform to usage. In 1787 every English dictionary defined "money" as metallic coin; and therefore as metallic coin, it must be interpreted in the clause which authorizes the legislature of the United States to borrow money. A second cardinal rule of interpretation is, where a word is used in the same document more than once, it is to be interpreted in every instance as bearing the same meaning, unless there is an obvious and incontrovertible reason to the contrary. The constitution of the United States authorizes their legislature to coin money; and of the meaning of the word in that clause, no doubt can exist.
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James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.541
Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS moved to strike out, "and emit bills on the credit of the United States." If the United States had credit, such bills would be unnecessary; If they had not, unjust and useless.
Mr. BUTLER seconds the motion.
p.542
Mr. MADISON. Will it not be sufficient to prohibit the making them a tender? This will remove the temptation to emit them with unjust views. And promissory notes, in that Shape, may in some emergencies be best.
Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. Striking out the words will leave room still for notes of a responsible minister, which will do all the, good without the mischief. The moneyed interest will oppose the plan of government, if paper emissions be not prohibited.
Mr. GORHAM was for striking out without inserting any prohibition. If the words stand, they may suggest and lead to the measure.
Mr. MASON had doubts on the subject. Congress, he thought, would not have the power, unless it were expressed. Though he had a mortal hatred to paper-money, yet as he could not foresee all emergencies, he was unwilling to tie the hands of the Legislature. He observed that the late war could not have been carried on, had such a prohibition existed.
Mr. GORHAM. The power, as far as it will be necessary, or safe, is involved in that of borrowing.
Mr. MERCER was a friend to paper-money, though in the present state and temper of America, he should neither propose nor approve of such a measure. He was consequently opposed to a prohibition of it altogether. It will stamp suspicion on the Government, to deny it a discretion on this point. It was impolitic, also, to excite the opposition of all those who were friends to paper-money. The people of property would be sure to be on the side of the plan, and it was impolitic to purchase their further attachment with the loss of the opposite class of citizens.
p. 543
Mr. ELLSWORTH thought this a favourable moment, to shut and bar the door against paper-money. The mischiefs of the various experiments which had been made were now fresh in the public mind, and had excited the disgust of all the respectable part of America. By withholding the power from the new Government, more friends of influence would be gained to it than by almost anything else. Paper-money can in no case be necessary. Give the Government credit, and other resources will offer. The power may do harm, never good.
Mr. RANDOLPH, notwithstanding his antipathy to paper-money, could not agree to strike out the words, as he could not foresee all the occasions that might arise.
Mr. WILSON. It will have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States, to remove the possibility of paper-money. This expedient can never succeed whilst its mischiefs are remembered. And as long as it can be resorted to, it will be a bar to other resources.
Mr. BUTLER remarked, that paper was a legal tender in no country in Europe. He was urgent for disarming the government of such a power.
Mr. MASON was still averse to tying the hands of the Legislature altogether. If there was no example in Europe, as just remarked, it might be observed, on the other side, that there was none in which the Government was restrained on this head.
Mr. READ thought the words, if not struck out, would be as alarming as the mark of the Beast in Revelation.
Mr. LANGDON had rather reject the whole plan, than retain the three words, "and emit bills."
On the motion for striking out,-
New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, aye-9; New Jersey, Maryland, no-2.
The clause for borrowing money was agreed to, nem. con.
Adjourned.
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Articles Of Confederation, Harvard Classics (1910), Vol.43, p.174
The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective States-fixing the standard of weights and measures throughout the United States-regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians, not members of any of the States, provided that the legislative right of any State within its own limits be not infringed or violated-establishing and regulating post-offices from one State to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing thro' the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office-appointing all officers of the land forces, in the service of the United States, excepting regimental officers-appointing all the officers of the naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in the service of the United States-making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and naval forces, and directing their operations.
Articles Of Confederation, Harvard Classics (1910), Vol.43, p.174
The United States in Congress assembled shall never engage in a war, nor grant letters of marque and reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any treaties or alliances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the sums and expenses necessary for the defence and welfare of the United States, or any of them, nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the credit of the United States, nor appropriate money, nor agree upon the number of vessels of war, to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to be raised, nor appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy, unless nine States assent to the same: nor shall a question on any other point, except for adjourning from day to day be determined, unless by the votes of a majority of the United States in Congress assembled.
Articles Of Confederation, Harvard Classics (1910), Vol.43, p.176
ARTICLE XII. All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed and debts contracted by, or under the authority of Congress, before the assembling of the United States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States, and the public faith are hereby solemnly pledged.
The United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
The United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 8
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
The United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 10
Section 10. No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.1, p.59-p.60
2. In speaking of the defects of the Confederation, he professed a high respect for its authors, and considered them as having done all that patriots could do, in the then infancy of the science of constitutions, and of confederacies; when the inefficiency of requisitions was unknown-no commercial discord had arisen among any States-no rebellion had appeared, as in Massachusetts-foreign debts had not become urgent-the havoc of paper-money had not been foreseen-treaties had not been violated-and perhaps nothing better could be obtained, from the jealousy of the States with regard to their sovereignty.
To borrow money and emit bills of credit; To establish post-offices; To raise armies; To build and equip fleets;
To coin money, and regulate the value of all coins, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To declare the law and punishment of piracies and felonies at sea, and of counterfeiting coin, and of all offences against the laws of nations;
"No State shall grant letters of marque and reprisal, or enter into treaty, or alliance, or confederation; nor grant any title of nobility; nor, without the consent of the Legislature of the United States, lay any impost on imports; nor keep troops or ships of war in time of peace; nor enter into compacts with other States or foreign powers; nor emit bills of credit; nor make any thing but gold, silver, or copper, a tender in payment of debts; nor engage in war, except for self-defense when actually invaded, or the danger of invasion be so great as not to admit of a delay until the Government of the United States can be informed thereof. And to render these prohibitions effectual, the Legislature of the United States shall have the power to revise the laws of the several States that may be supposed to infringe the powers exclusively delegated by this Constitution to Congress, and to negative and annul such as do.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.1, p.116-p.117
Col. MASON. Under the existing Confederacy, Congress represent the States, and not the People of the States; their acts operate on the States, not on the individuals. The case will be changed in the new plan of government. The people will be represented; they ought therefore to choose the Representatives. The requisites in actual representation are, that the representatives should sympathize with their constituents; should think as they think, and feel as they feel; and that for these purposes they should be residents among them. Much, he said, had been alleged against democratic elections. He admitted that much might be said; but it was to be considered that no government was free from imperfections and evils; and that improper elections in many instances were inseparable from republican governments. But compare these with the advantage of this form, in favor of the rights of the people, in favor of human nature! He was persuaded there was a better chance for proper elections by the people, if divided into large districts, than by the State Legislatures. Paper-money had been issued by the latter, when the former were against it. Was it to be supposed that the State Legislatures, then, would not send to the National Legislature patrons of such projects, if the choice depended on them?
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.1, p.120-p.121
General PINCKNEY wished to have a good National Government, and at the same time to leave a considerable share of power in the States. An election of either branch by the people, scattered as they are in many States, particularly in South Carolina, was totally impracticable. He differed from gentlemen who thought that a choice by the people would be a better guard against bad measures, than by the Legislatures. A majority of the people in South Carolina were notoriously for paper-money, as a legal tender; the Legislature had refused to make it a legal tender. The reason was, that the latter had some sense of character, and were restrained by that consideration. The State Legislatures, also, he said, would be more jealous, and more ready to thwart the National Government, if excluded from a participation in it. The idea of abolishing these Legislatures would never go down.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.1, p.128-p.129
Mr. MADISON could as little comprehend in what manner family weight, as desired by Mr DICKINSON, would be more certainly conveyed into the Senate through elections by the State Legislatures, than in some other modes. The true question was, in what mode the best choice would be made? If an election by the people, or through any other channel than the State Legislatures, promised as uncorrupt and impartial a preference of merit, there could surely be no necessity for an appointment by those Legislatures. Nor was it apparent that a more useful check would be derived through that channel, than from the people through some other. The great evils complained of were, that the State Legislatures run into schemes of paper-money, &c., whenever solicited by the people, and sometimes without even the sanction of the people. Their influence, then, instead of checking a like propensity in the National Legislature, may be expected to promote it. Nothing can be more contradictory than to say that the National Legislature, without a proper check, will follow the example of the State Legislatures; and, in the same breath, that the State Legislatures are the only proper check.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.1, p.129
Mr. GERRY insisted, that the commercial and monied interest would be more secure in the hands of the State Legislatures, than of the people at large. The former have more sense of character, and will be restrained by that from injustice. The people are for paper-money, when the Legislatures are against it. In Massachusetts the county conventions had declared a wish for a depreciating paper that would sink itself. Besides, in some States there are two branches in the Legislature, one of which is somewhat aristocratic. There would therefore be so far a better chance of refinement in the choice. There seemed, he thought, to be three powerful objections against elections by districts. First, it is impracticable; the people cannot be brought to one place for the purpose; and, whether brought to the same place or not, numberless frauds would be unavoidable. Secondly, small States, forming part of the same district with a large one, or a large part of a large one, would have no chance of gaining an appointment for its citizens of merit. Thirdly, a new source of discord would be opened between different parts of the same district.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.1, p.132-p.133
Mr. GERRY could not see the extent of such a power, and was against every power that was not necessary. He thought a remonstrance against unreasonable acts of the States would restrain them. If it should not, force might be resorted to. He had no objection to authorize a negative to paper-money and similar measures. When the confederation was depending before Congress, Massachusetts was then for inserting the power of emitting paper-money among the exclusive powers of Congress. He observed, that the proposed negative would extend to the regulations of the militia, a matter on which the existence of the State might depend The National Legislature, with such a power, may enslave the States. Such an idea as this will never be acceded to. It has never been suggested or conceived among the people. No speculative projector-and there are enough of that character among us, in politics as well as in other things-has, in any pamphlet or newspaper, thrown out the idea. The States, too, have different interests, and are ignorant of each other's interests. The negative, therefore, will be abused. New States, too, having separate views from the old States, will never come into the Union. They may even be under some foreign influence; are they in such case to participate in the negative on the will of the other States?
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.1, p.181-p.182-p.183
If they were extinguished, he was persuaded that great economy might be obtained by substituting a General Government. He did not mean, however, to shock the public opinion by proposing such a measure. On the other hand, he saw no other necessity for declining it. They are not necessary for any of the great purposes of commerce, revenue, or agriculture. Subordinate authorities, he was aware, would be necessary. There must be district tribunals; corporations for local purposes. But cui bono the vast and expensive apparatus now appertaining to the States? The only difficulty of a serious nature which occurred to him, was that of drawing representatives from the extremes to the centre of the community. What inducements can be offered that will suffice? The moderate wages for the first branch could only be a bait to little demagogues. Three dollars, or thereabouts, he supposed would be the utmost. The Senate, he feared, from a similar cause, would be filled by certain undertakers, who wish for particular offices under the government. This view of the subject almost led him to despair that a republican government could be established over so great an extent. He was sensible, at the same time, that it would be unwise to propose one of any other form. In his private opinion, he had no scruple in declaring, supported as he was by the opinion of so many of the wise and good, that the British Government was the best in the world; and that he doubted much whether any thing short of it would do in America. He hoped gentlemen of different opinions would bear with him in this, and begged them to recollect the change of opinion on this subject which had taken place, and was still going on. It was once thought that the power of Congress was amply sufficient to secure the end of their institution. The error was now seen by every one. The members most tenacious of republicanism, he observed, were as loud as any in declaiming against the vices of democracy. This progress of the public mind led him to anticipate the time, when others as well as himself, would join in the praise bestowed by Mr. NECKAR on the British Constitution, namely, that it is the only government in the world "which unites public strength with individual security." In every community where industry is encouraged, there will be a division of it into the few and the many. Hence, separate interests will arise. There will be debtors and creditors, &c. Give all power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all power to the few, they will oppress the many. Both, therefore, ought to have the power, that each may defend itself against the other. To the want of this check we owe our paper-money, instalment laws, &c. To the proper adjustment of it the British owe the excellence of their Constitution. Their House of Lords is a most noble institution. Having nothing to hope for by a change, and a sufficient interest, by means of their property, in being faithful to the national interest, they form a permanent barrier against every pernicious innovation, whether attempted on the part of the Crown or of the Commons. No temporary Senate will have firmness enough to answer the purpose. The Senate of Maryland which seems to be so much appealed to, has not yet been sufficiently tried. Had the people been unanimous and eager in the late appeal to them on the subject of a paper emission, they would have yielded to the torrent. Their acquiescing in such an appeal is a proof of it. Gentlemen differ in their opinions concerning the necessary checks, from the different estimates they form of the human passions. They suppose seven years a sufficient period to give the Senate an adequate firmness, from not duly considering the amazing violence and turbulence of the democratic spirit When a great object of government is pursued, which seizes the popular passions, they spread like wildfire and become irresistible. He appealed to the gentlemen from the New England States, whether experience had not there verified the remark. As to the Executive, it seemed to be admitted that no good one could be established on republic can principles.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.1, p.191
3. Will it prevent trespasses of the States on each other? Of these enough has been already seen. He instanced acts of Virginia and Maryland, which gave a preference to their own citizens in cases where the citizens of other States are entitled to equality of privileges by the Articles of Confederation. He considered the emissions of paper-money, and other kindred measures, as also aggressions. The States, relatively to one another, being each of them either debtor or creditor, the creditor States must suffer unjustly from every emission by the debtor States. We have seen retaliating acts on the subject, which threatened danger, not to the harmony only, but the tranquillity of the Union. The plan of Mr. PATTERSON, not giving even a negative on the acts of the States, left them as much at liberty as ever to execute their unrighteous projects against each other.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.1, p.254-p.255-p.256-p.257-p.258
Mr. MADISON said, he was much disposed to concur in any expedient, not inconsistent with fundamental principles, that could remove the difficulty concerning the rule of representation. But he could neither be convinced that the rule contended for was just, nor that it was necessary for the safety of the small States against the large States. That it was not just, had been conceded by Mr. BREARLY and Mr. PATTERSON themselves. The expedient proposed by them was a new partition of the territory of the United States. The fallacy of the reasoning drawn from the equality of sovereign states, in the formation of compacts, lay in confounding mere treaties, in which were specified certain duties to which the parties were to be bound, and certain rules by which their subjects were to be reciprocally governed in their intercourse, with a compact by which an authority was created paramount to the parties, and making laws for the government of them. If France, England and Spain were to enter into a treaty for the regulation of commerce, &c., with the Prince of Monacho, and four or five other of the smallest sovereigns of Europe, they would not hesitate to treat as equals, and to make the regulations perfectly reciprocal. Would the case be the same, if a Council were to be formed of deputies from each, with authority and discretion to raise money, levy troops, determine the value of coin, etc.? Would thirty or forty millions of people submit their fortunes into the hands of a few thousands? If they did, it would only prove that they expected more from the terror of their superior force, than they feared from the selfishness of their feeble associates. Why are counties of the same States represented in proportion to their numbers? Is it because the representatives are chosen by the people themselves? So will be the Representatives-in the National Legislature. Is it because the larger have more at stake than the smaller? The case will be the same with the larger and smaller States. Is it because the laws are to operate immediately on their persons and properties? The same is the case, in some degree, as the Articles of Confederation stand; the same will be the case, in a far greater degree, under the plan proposed to be substituted. In the Cases of captures, of piracies, and of offences in a Federal army, the property and persons of individuals depend on the laws of Congress. By the plan proposed a complete power of taxation, the highest prerogative of supremacy, is proposed to be vested in the National Government. Many other powers are added which assimilate it to the government of individual States. The negative proposed on the State laws will make it an essential branch of the State Legislatures, and of course will require that it should be exercised by a body, established on like principles with the branches of those Legislatures. That it is not necessary to secure the small States against the large ones, he conceived to be equally obvious. Was a combination of the large ones dreaded? This must arise either from some interest common to Virginia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and distinguishing them from the other States; or from the mere circumstance of similarity of size. Did any such common interest exist? In point of situation, they could not have been more effectually separated from each other, by the most jealous citizen of the most jealous States. In point of manners, religion, and the other circumstances which sometimes beget affection between different communities, they were not more assimilated than the other States. In point of the staple productions, they were as dissimilar as any three other States in the Union. The staple of Massachusetts was fish, of Pennsylvania flour, of Virginia tobacco. Was a combination to be apprehended from the mere circumstance of equality of size? Experience suggested no such danger. The Journals of Congress did not present any peculiar association of these States in the votes recorded. It had never been seen that different counties in the same State, conformable in extent, but disagreeing in other circumstances, betrayed a propensity to such combinations. Experience rather taught a contrary lesson. Among individuals of superior eminence and weight in society, rival-ships were much more frequent than coalitions. Among independent nations, pre-eminent over their neighbours, the same remark was verified. Carthage and Rome tore one another to pieces, instead of uniting their forces to devour the weaker nations of the earth. The Houses of Austria and France were hostile as long as they remained the greatest powers of Europe. England and France have succeeded to the pre-eminence and to the enmity. To this principle we owe perhaps our liberty. A coalition between those powers would have been fatal to us. Among the principal members of the ancient and modern confederacies, we find the same effect from the same cause. The contentions, not the coalitions, of Sparta, Athens, and Thebes, proved fatal to the smaller members of the Amphictyonic confederacy. The contentions, not the combinations, of Russia and Austria, have distracted and oppressed the German Empire. Were the large States formidable, singly, to their smaller neighbours? On this supposition, the latter ought to wish for such a General Government as will operate with equal energy on the former as on themselves. The more lax the band, the more liberty the larger will have to avail themselves of their superior force. Here again, experience was an instructive monitor. What is the situation of the weak compared with the strong, in those stages of civilization in which the violence of individuals is least controlled by an efficient government? The heroic period of ancient Greece, the feudal licentiousness of the middle ages of Europe, the existing condition of the American savages, answer this question. What is the situation of the minor sovereigns in the great society of independent nations, in which the more powerful are under no control, but the nominal authority of the law of nations? Is not the danger to the former exactly in proportion to their weakness? But there are cases still more in point. What was the condition of the weaker members of the Amphictyonic confederacy? Plutarch (see Life of Themistocles) will inform us, that it happened but too often, that the strongest cities corrupted and awed the weaker, and that judgment went in favor of the more powerful party. What is the condition of the lesser States in the German confederacy? We all know that they are exceedingly trampled upon, and that they owe their safety, as far as they enjoy it, partly to their enlisting themselves under the rival banners of the pre-eminent members, partly to alliances with neighbouring princes, which the constitution of the Empire does not prohibit. What is the state of things in the lax system of the Dutch confederacy? Holland contains about half the people, supplies about half the money, and by her influence silently and indirectly governs the whole republic. In a word, the two extremes before us are, a perfect separation, and a perfect incorporation of the thirteen States. In the first case, they would be independent nations, subject to no law but the law of nations. In the last they would be mere counties of one entire republic, subject to one common law. In the first case, the smaller States would have every thing to fear from the larger. In the last they would have nothing to fear. The true policy of the small States, therefore, lies in promoting those principles, and that form of government, which will most approximate the States to the condition of counties. Another consideration may be added. If the General Government be feeble, the larger States, distrusting its continuance, and foreseeing that their importance and security may depend on their own size and strength, will never submit to a partition. Give to the General Government sufficient energy and permanency, and you remove the objection. Gradual partitions of the large, and junctions of the small States, will be facilitated, and time may effect that equalization which is wished for by the small States now, but can never be accomplished at once.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.1, p.361-p.362
Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS opposed it. The internal police, as it would be called and understood by the States, ought to be infringed in many cases, as in the case of paper-money, and other tricks by which citizens of other States may be affected.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.1, p.382-p.383
Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. It is necessary to take into one view all that relates to the establishment of the Executive; on the due formation of which must depend the efficacy and utility of the union among the present and future States. It has been a maxim in political science, that republican government is not adapted to a large extent of country, because the energy of the executive magistracy cannot reach the extreme parts of it. Our country is an extensive one. We must either then renounce the blessings of the Union, or provide an Executive with sufficient vigor to pervade every part of it. This subject was of so much importance that he hoped to be indulged in an extensive view of it. One great object of the Executive is, to control the Legislature. The Legislature will continually seek to aggrandize and perpetuate themselves; and will seize those critical moments produced by war, invasion, or convulsion, for that purpose. It is necessary, then, that the Executive magistrate should be the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, against legislative tyranny; against the great and the wealthy, who in the course of things will necessarily compose the legislative body. Wealth tends to corrupt the mind;-to nourish its love of power; and to stimulate it to oppression. History proves this to be the spirit of the opulent. The check provided in the second branch was not meant as a check on legislative usurpations of power, but on the abuse of lawful powers, on the propensity of the first branch to legislate too much, to run into projects of paper-money, and similar expedients. It is no check on legislative tyranny. On the contrary it may favor it; and if the first branch can be seduced, may find the means of success. The Executive, therefore, ought to be so constituted, as to be the great protector of the mass of the people. It is the duty of the Executive to appoint the officers, and to command the forces, of the Republic; to appoint, first ministerial officers for the administration of public affairs; secondly, officers for the dispensation of justice. Who will be the best judges whether these appointments be will made? The people at large who will know, will see, will fee, the effects of them. Again, who can judge so well of the discharge of military duties for the protection and security of the people, as the people themselves, who are to be protected and secured? He finds, too, that the Executive is not be be re-eligible. What effect will this have? In the first place, it will destroy the great incitement to merit, public esteem, by taking away the hope of being rewarded with a re-appointment. It may give a dangerous turn to one of the stongest passions in the human breast. The love of fame is the great spring to noble and illustrious actions. Shut the civil road to glory, and he may be compelled to seek it by the sword.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.400 - p.401 - p.402
Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. Some check being necessary on the Legislature, the question is, in what hands it should be lodged? On one side, it was contended, that the Executive alone ought to exercise it. He did not think that an Executive appointed for six years, and impeachable whilst in office, would be a very effectual check. On the other side, it was urged, that he ought to be reinforced by the Judiciary department. Against this it was objected, that expositors of laws ought to have no hand in making them, and arguments in favor of this had been drawn from England. What weight was due to them might be easily determined by an attention to facts. The truth was, that the Judges in England had a great share in the legislation. They are consulted in difficult and doubtful cases. They may be, and some of them are, members of the Legislature. They are, or may be, members of the Privy Council; and can there advise the Executive, as they will do with us if the motion succeeds. The influence the English Judges may have, in the latter capacity, in strengthening the Executive check, cannot be ascertained, as the King, by his influence, in a manner dictates the laws. There is one difference in the two cases, however, which disconcerts all reasoning from the British to our proposed Constitution. The British Executive has so great an interest in his prerogatives, and such power for means of defending them, that he will never yield any part of them. The interest of our Executive is so inconsiderable and so transitory, and his means of defending it so feeble, that there is the justest ground to fear his want of firmness in resisting encroachments. He was extremely apprehensive that the auxiliary firmness and weight of the Judiciary would not supply the deficiency. He concurred in thinking the public liberty in greater danger from Legislative usurpations, than from any other source. It had been said that the Legislature ought to be relied on, as the proper guardians of liberty. The answer was short and conclusive. Either bad laws will be pushed, or not. On the latter supposition, no check will be wanted. On the former, a strong check will be necessary. And this is the proper supposition. Emissions of paper-money, largesses to the people, a remission of debts, and similar measures, will at some times be popular, and will be pushed for that reason. At other times, such measures will coincide with the interests of the Legislature themselves, and that will be a reason not less cogent for pushing them. It may be thought that the people will not be deluded and misled in the latter case. But experience teaches another lesson. The press is indeed a great means of diminishing the evil; yet it is found to be unable to prevent it altogether.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.454
To coin money;
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.454
To regulate the value of foreign coin;
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.454
To declare the law and punishment of piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and the punishment of counterfeiting the coin of the United States, and of offences against the law of nations;
No State shall coin money; nor grant letters of marque and reprisal; nor enter into any treaty, alliance or confederation; nor grant any title of nobility.
No State, without the consent of the Legislature of the United States, shall emit bills of credit, or make anything but specie a tender in payment of debts; nor lay imposts or duties on imports; nor keep troops or ships of war in time of peace; nor enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or with any foreign power; nor engage in any war, unless it shall be actually invaded by enemies, or the danger of invasion be so imminent as not to admit of a delay until the Legislature of the United States can be consulted.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.537
Article sixth, relative to the elections, qualifications, and proceedings of the Legislature, resumed-Motion to subject joint resolutions, (except on adjournment,) to the negative of the Executive-Agreed to.
Article seventh, relative to the powers of the Legislature-Motion to exclude exports from duty-Postponed-Motion to authorize the establishment of post roads-Agreed to-Motion to forbid the emission of bills of credit-Agreed to.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.541
The several clauses,-for coining money-for regulating foreign coin-for fixing the standard of weights and measures,-were agreed to, nem. con.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.542
Mr. MASON had doubts on the subject. Congress, he thought, would not have the power, unless it were expressed. Though he had a mortal hatred to paper-money, yet as he could not foresee all emergencies, he was unwilling to tie the hands of the Legislature. He observed that the late war could not have been carried on, had such a prohibition existed.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.542
Mr. MERCER was a friend to paper-money, though in the present state and temper of America, he should neither propose nor approve of such a measure. He was consequently opposed to a prohibition of it altogether. It will stamp suspicion on the Government, to deny it a discretion on this point. It was impolitic, also, to excite the opposition of all those who were friends to paper-money. The people of property would be sure to be on the side of the plan, and it was impolitic to purchase their further attachment with the loss of the opposite class of citizens.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.542 - p.543
Mr. ELLSWORTH thought this a favourable moment, to shut and bar the door against paper-money. The mischiefs of the various experiments which had been made were now fresh in the public mind, and had excited the disgust of all the respectable part of America. By withholding the power from the new Government, more friends of influence would be gained to it than by almost anything else. Paper-money can in no case be necessary. Give the Government credit, and other resources will offer. The power may do harm, never good.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.543
Mr. RANDOLPH, notwithstanding his antipathy to paper-money, could not agree to strike out the words, as he could not foresee all the occasions that might arise.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.543
Mr. WILSON. It will have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States, to remove the possibility of paper-money. This expedient can never succeed whilst its mischiefs are remembered. And as long as it can be resorted to, it will be a bar to other resources.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.546
Mr. ELLSWORTH enlarged the motion, so as to read, "to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, and offences against the laws of nations," which was agreed to, nem. con.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.618
Article eleventh, relative to the Judiciary-Motion to confine the appellate jurisdiction in certain cases to the Supreme Court-Agreed to-Motion that crimes not committed within any State be tried where the Legislature directs-Agreed to-Motion that the writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless required by invasion or rebellion-Agreed to.
Article twelfth, relative to the prohibitions on the power of the States-Motions to prohibit them absolutely from emitting bills of credit, legalizing any tender except gold or silver, or passing attainders or retrospective laws, or laying duties on imports-Agreed to-Motion to forbid them to lay embargoes-Disagreed to.
Article thirteenth, relative to the prohibitions on slaves, unless authorized by the National Legislature-Motion to include in these duties on exports, and, if permitted, to be for the use of the use of the United States-Agreed to.
Article fourteenth, relative to the rights of citizens of one State in another-Agreed to.
Article fifteenth, relative to the delivery of persons fleeing to other States-Motion to extend it to all cases of crime-Agreed to-Motion to extend it to fugitive slaves-Withdrawn.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.619
Mr. WILSON and Mr. SHERMAN moved to insert, after the words, "coin money," the words, "nor emit bills of credit, nor make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts;" making these prohibitions absolute, instead of making the measures allowable, as in the thirteenth Article, with the consent of the Legislature of the United States.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.620
Mr. GORHAM thought the purpose would be as well secured by the provision of Article 13, which makes the consent of the General Legislature necessary; and that in that mode no opposition would be excited; whereas an absolute prohibition of paper-money would rouse the most desperate opposition from its partisans.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.620
Mr. SHERMAN thought this a favourable crisis for crushing paper-money. If the consent of the Legislature could authorize emissions of it, the friends of paper-money would make every exertion to get into the Legislature in order to license it.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.620
The question being divided,-on the first part: "nor emit bills of credit,"
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.620
Mr. SHERMAN. Why then prohibit bills of credit?
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.704
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.705
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.706
Sect. 10. No State shall coin money, or emit bills of credit, or make any thing but gold or silver coin a tender in payment of debts, or pass any bills of attainder, or ex post facto laws, or laws altering or impairing the obligation of contracts; or grant letters of marque and reprisal, or enter into any treaty, alliance or confederation, or grant any title of nobility.
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.729 - p.730
The firs' clause of Article 1, Sect. 10, was altered so as to read, "no State shall enter into any treaty, alliance or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility."
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.753
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures:
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.753
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States:
James Madison, Journal of the Federal Convention, Vol.2, p.755
Sect. 10. No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.
James Madison, Federalist No. 10, p.128
The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it, in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district than an entire State.
James Madison, Federalist No. 19, p.165
The diet possesses the general power of legislating for the empire; of making war and peace; contracting alliances; assessing quotas of troops and money; constructing fortresses; regulating coin; admitting new members; and subjecting disobedient members to the ban of the empire, by which the party is degraded from his sovereign rights and his possessions forfeited. The members of the confederacy are expressly restricted from entering into compacts prejudicial to the empire; from imposing tolls and duties on their mutual intercourse, without the consent of the emperor and diet; from altering the value of money; from doing injustice to one another; or from affording assistance or retreat to disturbers of the public peace. And the ban is denounced against such as shall violate any of these restrictions. The members of the diet, as such, are subject in all cases to be judged by the emperor and diet, and in their private capacities by the aulic council and imperial chamber.
James Madison, Federalist No. 19, p.168
They have no common treasury; no common troops even in war; no common coin; no common judicatory; nor any other common mark of sovereignty.
James Madison, Federalist No. 38, p.252
It is a matter both of wonder and regret that those who raise so many objections against the new Constitution should never call to mind the defects of that which is to be exchanged for it. It is not necessary that the former should be perfect: it is sufficient that the latter is more imperfect. No man would refuse to give brass for silver or gold, because the latter had some alloy in it. No man would refuse to quit a shattered and tottering habitation for a firm and commodious building because the latter had not a porch to it, or because some of the rooms might be a little larger or smaller, or the ceiling a little higher or lower than his fancy would have planned them. But waiving illustrations of this sort, is it not manifest that most of the capital objections urged against the new system lie with tenfold weight against the existing Confederation? Is an indefinite power to raise money dangerous in the hands of the federal government? The present Congress can make requisitions to any amount they please, and the States are constitutionally bound to furnish them; they can emit bills of credit as long as they will pay for the paper; they can borrow, both abroad and at home, as long as a shilling will be lent. Is an indefinite power to raise troops dangerous? The Confederation gives to Congress that power also; and they have already begun to make use of it. Is it improper and unsafe to intermix the different powers of government in the same body of men? Congress, a single body of men, are the sole depositary of all the federal powers. Is it particularly dangerous to give the keys of the treasury, and the command of the army, into the same hands? The Confederation places them both in the hands of Congress. Is a bill of rights essential to liberty? The Confederation has no bill of rights. Is it an objection against the new Constitution that it empowers the Senate, with the concurrence of the executive, to make treaties which are to be the laws of the land? The existing Congress, without any such control, can make treaties which they themselves have declared and most of the States have recognized, to be the supreme law of the land. Is the importation of slaves permitted by the new Constitution for twenty years? By the old it is permitted forever.
James Madison, Federalist No. 42, p.275 - p.276
Under this head might be included the particular restraints imposed on the authority of the States and certain powers of the judicial department; for the former are reserved for a distinct class and the latter will be particularly examined when we arrive at the structure and organization of the government. I shall confine myself to a cursory review of the remaining powers comprehended under this third description, to wit: to regulate commerce among the several States and the Indian tribes; to coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin; to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the current coin and securities of the United States; to fix the standard of weights and measures; to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws of bankruptcy; to prescribe the manner in which the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of each State shall be proved, and the effect they shall have in other States; and to establish post offices and post roads.
James Madison, Federalist No. 42, p.277
All that need be remarked on the power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, is that by providing for this last case, the Constitution has supplied a material omission in the Articles of Confederation. The authority of the existing Congress is restrained to the regulation of coin struck by their own authority, or that of the respective States. It must be seen at once that the proposed uniformity in the value of the current coin might be destroyed by subjecting that of foreign coin to the different regulations of the different States.
James Madison, Federalist No. 42, p.277
The punishment of counterfeiting the public securities, as well as the current coin, is submitted of course to that authority which is to secure the value of both.
James Madison, Federalist No. 42, p.277
The regulation of weights and measures is transferred from the Articles of Confederation, and is founded on like considerations with the preceding power of regulating coin.
James Madison, Federalist No. 44, p.286
1. "No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts; or grant any title of nobility."
James Madison, Federalist No. 44, p.287
The extension of the prohibition to bills of credit must give pleasure to every citizen in proportion to his love of justice and his knowledge of the true springs of public prosperity. The loss which America has sustained since the peace, from the pestilent effects of paper money on the necessary confidence between man and man, on the necessary confidence in the public councils, on the industry and morals of the people, and on the character of republican government, constitutes an enormous debt against the States chargeable with this unadvised measure, which must long remain unsatisfied; or rather an accumulation of guilt, which can be expiated no otherwise than by a voluntary sacrifice on the altar of justice of the power which has been the instrument of it. In addition to these persuasive considerations, it may be observed that the same reasons which show the necessity of denying to the States the power of regulating coin prove with equal force that they ought not to be at liberty to substitute a paper medium in the place of coin. Had every State a right to regulate the value of its coin, there might be as many different currencies as States, and thus the intercourse among them would be impeded; retrospective alterations in its value might be made, and thus the citizens of other States be injured, and animosities be kindled among the States themselves. The subjects of foreign powers might suffer from the same cause, and hence the Union be discredited and embroiled by the indiscretion of a single member. No one of these mischiefs is less incident to a power in the States to emit paper money than to coin gold or silver. The power to make anything but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts is withdrawn from the States on the same principle with that of issuing a paper currency.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 69, p.401 - p.402
The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for four years; the king of Great Britain is a perpetual and hereditary prince. The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable. The one would have a qualified negative upon the acts of the legislative body; the other has an absolute negative. The one would have a right to command the military and naval forces of the nation; the other, in addition to this right, possesses that of declaring war, and of raisiny and regulating fleets and armies by his own authority. The one would have a concurrent power with a branch of the legislature in the formation of treaties; the other is the sole possessor of the power of making treaties. The one would have a like concurrent authority in appointing to offices; the other is the sole author of all appointments. The one can confer no privileges whatever; the other can make denizens of aliens, noblemen of commoners; can erect corporations with all the rights incident to corporate bodies. 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. The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the other is the supreme head and governor of the national church! What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The same that ought to be given to those who tell us that a government, the whole power of which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.
PUBLIUS [Hamilton]
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 80, p.445
The first point depends upon this obvious consideration, that there ought always to be a constitutional method of giving efficacy to constitutional provisions. What, for instance, would avail restrictions on the authority of the State legislatures, without some constitutional mode of enforcing the observance of them? The States, by the plan of the convention, are prohibited from doing a variety of things, some of which are incompatible with the interests of the Union and others with the principles of good government. The imposition of duties on imported articles and the emission of paper money are specimens of each kind. No man of sense will believe that such prohibitions would be scrupulously regarded without some effectual power in the government to restrain or correct the infractions of them. This power must either be a direct negative on the State laws, or an authority in the federal courts to overrule such as might be in manifest contravention of the articles of Union. There is no third course that I can imagine. The latter appears to have been thought by the convention preferable to the former, and I presume will be most agreeable to the States.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 80, p.448
First. To all cases in law and equity, arising under the Constitution and the laws of the United States, This corresponds to the two first classes of causes which have been enumerated, as proper for the jurisdiction of the United States. It has been asked what is meant by "cases arising under the Constitution," in contradistinction from those "arising under the laws of the United States"? The difference has been already explained. All the restrictions upon the authority of the State legislatures furnish examples of it. They are not, for instance, to emit paper money; but the interdiction results from the Constitution and will have no connection with any law of the United States. Should paper money, notwithstanding, be emitted, the controversies concerning it would be cases arising under the Constitution and not the laws of the United States, in the ordinary signification of the terms. This may serve as a sample of the whole.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.6
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.6
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.8
No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money, emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law; or law impairing the obligation of contracts; or grant any title of nobility.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.48
The original of this commission has been preserved in the department of state, at Washington city. Congress at the same time resolved, that they would maintain, assist, and adhere to George Washington, with their lives and fortunes, in the same cause. On the 22d of June, it was resolved to emit a sum not exceeding two millions of Spanish milled dollars, in bills of credit, for the redemption of which the twelve confederated colonies were pledged. On the 24th of June, a resolution was entered into for devising ways and means to put the militia of America in a proper state for defence. On the 30th of June, Congress adopted rules and regulations for the government of the army. On the same day, the committee for Indian affairs was directed to prepare proper talks to the several tribes, for engaging the continuance of their friendship and neutrality.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.50
On the 1st of November, the exportation of rice was prohibited to Great Britain, Ireland, or the islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Sark, Alderney, or Man, or any other European island or settlement within the British dominions. On the 3d of November, Congress resolved, that it should be recommended to the Provincial Convention of New Hampshire, which had applied for advice, to call a full and free representation of the people, and to establish such a form of government as would best promote the happiness of the people, &c., during the continuance of the dispute between Great [p.51] Britain and the colonies. A similar resolution was entered into in relation to South Carolina. On the 8th of November, a draft of instructions was agreed to for R. R. Livingston, Robert Treat Paine, and J. Langdon, who were appointed to proceed to Ticonderoga, to consult with General Schuyler on the necessary operations in that quarter, and to exert their utmost endeavors to induce the Canadians to accede to a union with the colonies; to form, from their several parishes, a provincial convention; and to send delegates to Congress. At this time, likewise, all letters to and from the delegates of the United Colonies, during the sessions of Congress, were authorized to pass and be carried free of postage, the members having engaged upon honor not to frank or endorse any letters but their own. On the 10th of November, a similar privilege, without exception, was extended to all letters to and from the commander-in-chief of the Continental army, or the chief commander in the army, in the northern military department. On the same day, it was resolved to raise two battalions of marines. On the 11th of November, a resolution was entered into, authorizing the repair of the fortifications, &c., of Quebec, in case it should be taken from the British. On the 16th of November, it was resolved that no member of Congress should absent himself from that body without leave; and a rule was adopted, that every member should remain in his seat whilst any paper was reading or question was putting On the 23d of November, Congress authorized the consideration of a plan for carrying on a trade with the Indians. On the 25th of November, resolutions were passed, directing seizures, and the capture, under commissions obtained from the Congress, together with the condemnation, of British vessels employed in a hostile manner against the colonies; the mode of trial and of condemnation was pointed out, and the shares of the prizes were apportioned. On the 28th of November, Congress adopted rules for the regulation of the navy of the United Colonies. On the 29th of November, Congress was informed of General Montgomery's having, with the Continental troops, taken possession of Montreal on the 12th of that month. The same day an emission of bills of credit was resolved on, to the amount of three millions of dollars.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.52
On the 6th of January, 1776, a regulation was adopted relative to the division of prizes and prize-money, taken by armed vessels, among officers and men. On the 9th of January, it was resolved that no postage should be paid for any letters to or from private soldiers, while engaged in actual service in defence of the United Colonies, and that they should be franked by some person authorized for that purpose. On the 11th of January, Congress ordained that persons refusing to receive the Continental bills of credit in payment, or who should obstruct and discourage the currency or circulation thereof, should, on conviction, be deemed, published, and treated, as an enemy of the country, and be precluded from all trade and intercourse with the inhabitants of the colonies. On the 27th of January, resolutions were entered into for carrying on trade with the Indians, and for procuring the necessary supply of goods for that purpose. On the 30th of January, it was resolved that no apprentice should be enlisted within the colonies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the counties on Delaware, or Maryland, as a soldier in the army or navy of the United Colonies, without the previous consent of his master or mistress, in writing; all those enlisted in a contrary manner were ordered to be discharged, on application, and a reimbursement of expenses incurred [p.53] for enlistment; and every person under the age of twenty-one years, who had enlisted in the army or navy, was, within twenty-four hours thereafter, entitled to his discharge on refunding the amount of money and articles with which he had been supplied. It was, at the same time, recommended to creditors, who had claims against persons in the army or navy for less than thirty-five dollars, not to arrest the debtors until their terms of service had expired.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.53
On the 17th of February, a standing committee of five was appointed for superintending the treasury, and Congress directed the emission of the further sum of four million dollars in bills of credit. On the 27th of February, the middle and southern colonies were divided into two military departments, in the following manner: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the lower counties on Delaware, and Maryland, to constitute one; Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to constitute another; the former to be put under the command of a major-general, two brigadier-generals, and a proper staff; the latter under a major-general, three brigadier-generals, with a suitable staff.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.54
On the 6th of May, it was resolved that ten millions of dollars be raised, for the purpose of carrying on the war, for the year 1776; and measures were taken for treating with the Indians. On the 9th of May, a resolution passed for the emission of five millions of dollars in bills of credit, in part of the ten millions of dollars voted for the service of the year 1776. On the 10th of May, it was resolved to recommend to the respective assemblies and conventions of the United [p.55] Colonies, where no government sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs had been established, to adopt such a government as should, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents in particular, and of America in general. A preamble to this resolution, agreed to on the 15th of May, stated the intention to be totally to suppress the exercise of every kind of authority under the British crown.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.82
The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective states; fixing the standard of weights and measures throughout the United States; regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians not members of any of the states, provided that the legislative right of any state within its own limits be not infringed or violated; establishing and regulating post-offices from one state to another throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office; appointing all officers of the land forces in the service of the United States, excepting regimental officers; appointing all the officers of the naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in the service of the United States; making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and naval forces, and directing their operations.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.83
The United States in Congress assembled shall never engage in a war; nor grant letters of marque and reprisal in time of peace; nor enter into any treaties or alliances; nor coin money; nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the sums and expenses necessary for the defence and welfare of the United States, or any of them; nor emit bills; nor borrow money upon the number of vessels of war to be built or purchased, or the number of the army or navy,-unless nine states assent to the same; nor shall a question or any other point, except for adjourning from day to day, be determined, unless by the votes of a majority of the United States in Congress assembled.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.84
ARTICLE 12. All bills of credit emitted, moneys borrowed, and debts contracted, by or under the authority of Congress, before the assembling of the United States in pursuance of the present Confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States, and the public faith, are hereby solemnly pledged.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.147
"To borrow money and emit bills of credit;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.147
"To coin money, and to regulate the value of all coins, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.147
"To declare the law and punishment of piracies and felonies at sea, and of counterfeiting coin, and of all offences against the laws of nations;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.149
"ART. XI. No state shall grant letters of marque and reprisal, or enter into treaty, or alliance, or confederation; nor grant any title of nobility; nor, without the consent of the legislature of the United States, lay any impost on imports; nor keep troops or ships of war in time of peace; nor enter into compacts with other states or foreign powers, or emit bills of credit, or make any thing but gold, silver, or copper, a tender in payment of debts; nor engage in war, except in self-defence, when actually invaded, or the danger of invasion is so great as not to admit of a delay until the government of the United States can be informed thereof. And to render these prohibitions effectual, the legislature of the United States shall have the power to revise the laws of the several states that may be supposed to infringe the powers exclusively delegated by this constitution to Congress, and to negative and annul such as do.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.226
"To coin money;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.226
"To regulate the value of foreign coin;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.226
"To declare the law and punishment of piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and the punishment of counterfeiting the coin of the United States, and of offences against the law of nations;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.229
"ART. XII. No state shall coin money; nor grant letters of marque and reprisal; nor enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; nor grant any title of nobility.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.229
"ART. XIII. No state, without the consent of the legislature of the United States, shall emit bills of credit, or make any thing but specie a tender in payment of debts; lay imposts or duties on imports; nor keep troops or ships of war in time of peace; nor enter lute any agreement or compact with another state, or with any foreign power; nor engage in any war, unless it shall be actually invaded by enemies, or the danger of invasion be so imminent as not to admit of a delay until the legislature of the United States can be consulted.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.246
"To punish the counterfeiting of the securities and current coin of the United States and offences against the law of nations;"
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.271
It was moved and seconded to insert the words "nor [p.271] emit bills of credit" after the word "money," in the 12th article; which passed in the affirmative.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.271
"nor make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts;"
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.300
"To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.300
"To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.301
"SECT. 10. No state shall coin money, nor emit bills of credit, nor make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, nor pass any bill of attainder, nor ex post facto laws, nor laws altering or impairing the obligation of contracts; nor grant letters of marque and reprisal; nor enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; nor grant any title of nobility.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.311
"No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation, grant letters of marque and reprisal, coin money, emit bills of credit, make any thing but gold or silver coin a tender in payment of debts, pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts or grant any title of nobility."
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.336
III. It is declared by the Convention, that the judicial power of the United States, in cases in which a state may be a party, does not extend to criminal prosecutions, or to authorize any suit by any person against a state; but, to remove all doubts or controversies respecting the same, that it be especially expressed, as a part of the Constitution of the United States, that Congress shall not, directly or indirectly, either by themselves or through the judiciary, interfere with any one of the states, in the redemption of paper money already emitted, and now in circulation, or in liquidating and discharging the public securities of any one state; that each and every state shall have the exclusive right of making such laws and regulations for the before-mentioned purpose as they shall think proper.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.369
By our original Articles of Confederation, the Congress have power to borrow money and emit bills of credit on the credit of the United States: agreeable to which was the report on this system, as made by the commit tee of detail. When we came to this part of the report, a motion was made to strike out the words "to emit bills of credit:" Against the motion we urged, that it would be improper to deprive the Congress of that power; that it would be a novelty unprecedented to establish a government which should not have such authority; that it was impossible to look forward into futurity so far as to decide that events might not happen that should render the exercise of such a power absolutely necessary; and that we doubted whether, if a war should take place, it would be possible for this country to defend itself without having recourse to paper credit, in which case there would be a necessity of becoming a prey to our enemies, [p.370] or violating the constitution of our government; and that, considering the administration of the government would be principally in the hands of the wealthy, there could be little reason to fear an abuse of the power by an unnecessary or injurious exercise of it. But, sir, a majority of the Convention, being wise beyond every event, and being willing. to risk any political evil rather than admit the idea of a paper emission in any possible case, refused to trust this authority to a government to which they were lavishing the most unlimited powers of taxation, and to the mercy of which they were willing blindly to trust the liberty and property of the citizens of every state in the Union; and they erased that clause from the system. Among other powers given to this government in the eighth section, it has that of appointing tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court. To this power there was an opposition. It was urged that there was no occasion for inferior courts of the general government to be appointed in the different states, and that such ought not to be admitted-that the different state judiciaries in the respective states would be competent to, and sufficient for, the cognizance in the first instance of all cases that should arise under the laws of the general government, which, being by this system made the supreme law of the states, would be binding on the different state judiciaries - that, by giving an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, the general government would have a sufficient check over their decisions, and security for the enforcing of their laws-that to have inferior courts appointed under the authority of Congress, in the different states, would eventually absorb and swallow up the state judiciaries, by drawing all business from them to the courts of the general government, which the extensive and undefined powers, legislative and judicial, of which it is possessed, would easily enable it to do - that it would unduly and dangerously increase the weight and influence of Congress in the several states; be productive of a prodigious number of officers; and be attended with an enormous additional and unnecessary expense-that, the judiciaries of the respective states not having power to decide upon the laws of the general government, but the determination of those laws being confined to the judiciaries appointed under the authority of Congress in the first instance, as well as on appeal, there would be a necessity for judges or magistrates of the general government, and those to a considerable number, in each county of every state-that there would be a necessity for courts to be holden by them in each county, and that these courts would stand in need of all proper officers, such as sheriffs, clerks, and others, commissioned under the authority of the general government in fine,-that the administration of justice, as it will relate to the laws of the general government, would require in each state all the magistrates, courts, officers, and expense, which are now found necessary, in the respective states, for the administration of justice as it relates to the laws of the state governments. But here, again, we were overruled by a majority, who, assuming it as a principle that the general government and the state governments (as long as they should exist) would be at perpetual variance and enmity, and that their interests would constantly be opposed to each other, insisted, for that reason, that the state judges, being citizens of their respective states, and holding their commissions under them, ought not, though acting on oath, to be intrusted with the administration of the laws of the general government.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.374
It was urged that, by this system, we were giving the general government full and absolute power to regulate commerce, under which general power it would have a right to restrain, or totally prohibit, the slave trade; it must therefore appear to the world absurd and disgraceful, to the last degree, that we should except from the exercise of that power the only branch of commerce which is unjustifiable in its nature, and contrary to the rights of mankind-that, on the contrary, we ought rather to prohibit expressly, in our Constitution, the further importation of slaves; and to authorize the general government, from time to time, to make such regulations as should be thought most advantageous for the gradual abolition of slavery, and the emancipation of the slaves which are already in the states - that slavery is inconsistent with the genius of republicanism, and has a tendency to destroy those principles on which it is supported, as it lessens the sense of the equal rights of mankind, and habituates us to tyranny and oppression. It was further urged that, by this system of government, every state is to be protected both from foreign invasion and from domestic insurrections; that, from this consideration, it was of the utmost importance it should have a power to restrain the importation of slaves, since, in proportion as the number of slaves was increased in any state, in the same proportion the state is weakened and exposed to foreign invasion or domestic insurrection, and by so much less will it be able to protect itself against either; and therefore will, by so much the more, want aid from, and be a burden to, the Union. It was further said that as, in this system, we were giving the general government a power, under the idea of national character or national interest, to regulate even our weights and measures, and have prohibited all possibility of emitting paper money, and passing insolvent laws, &c., it must appear still more extraordinary, that we should prohibit the government from interfering with the slave trade, than which nothing could so materially affect both our national honor and interest. These reasons influenced me, both on the committee and in Convention, most decidedly to oppose and vote against the clause, as it now makes a part of the system.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.376
By the tenth section, every state is prohibited from emitting bills of credit. As it was reported by the committee of detail, the states were only prohibited from emitting them without the consent of Congress; but the Convention was so smitten with the paper-money dread, that they insisted the prohibition should be absolute. It was my opinion, sir, that the states ought not to be totally deprived of the right to emit bills of credit, and that, as we had not given an authority to the general government for that purpose, it was the more necessary to retain it in the states. I considered that this state, and some others, have formerly received great benefit from paper emissions, and that, if public and private credit should once more be restored, such emissions may hereafter be equally advantageous; and further, that it is impossible to foresee that events may not take place which shall render paper money of absolute necessity; and it was my opinion, if this power was not to be exercised by a state without the permission of the general government, it ought to be satisfactory even to those who were the most haunted by the apprehensions of paper money. I therefore thought it my duty to vote against this part of the system.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.376
The same section also puts it out of the power of the states to make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, or to pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.400
Mr. GERRY supposes that this power ought to extend to all laws already made; but the preferable mode would be to designate the powers of the national legislature, to which the negative ought to apply. He has no objection to restrain the laws which may be made for issuing paper money. Upon the whole, he does not choose, on this important trust, to take a leap in the dark.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.424
The rights of individuals are infringed by many of the state laws-such as issuing paper money, and instituting a [p.425] mode to discharge debts differing from the form of the contract. Has the Jersey plan any checks to prevent the mischief? Does it in any instance secure internal tranquillity Right and force, in a system like this, are synonymous terms When force is employed to support the system, and men obtain military habits, is there no danger they may turn their arms against their employers? Will the Jersey plan prevent foreign influence? Did not Persia and Macedon distract the councils of Greece by acts of corruption? And are not Jersey and Holland at this day subject to the same distractions? Will not the plan be burdensome to the smaller states, if they have an equal representation? But how is military coercion to enforce government? True, a smaller state may be brought to obedience, or crushed; but what if one of the larger states should prove disobedient, -are you sure you can by force effect a submission? Suppose we cannot agree on any plan; what will be the condition of the smaller states? Will Delaware and Jersey be safe against Pennsylvania, or Rhode Island against Massachusetts? And how will the smaller states be situated in case of partial confederacies? Will they not be obliged to make larger concessions to the greater states? The point of representation is the great point of difference, and which the greater states cannot give up; and although there was an equalization of states, state distinctions would still exist. But this is totally impracticable; and what would be the effect of the Jersey plan if ten or twelve new states were added?
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 1, p.492
The restraint on the legislatures of the several states respecting emitting bills of credit, making any thing but money a tender in payment of debts, or impairing the obligation of contracts by ex post facto laws, was thought necessary as a security to commerce, in which the interest of foreigners, as well as of the citizens of different states, may be affected.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 2, p.30
Hon. Mr. TURNER. Mr. President, I am pleased with the ingenuity of some gentlemen in defence of this section. I am so impressed with the love of our liberty, so dearly bought, that I heartily acquiesce to compulsory laws, for the people ought to be obliged to attend to their interest. But I do not wish to give Congress a power which they can abuse; and I wish to know whether such a power is not contained in this section? I think it is. I now proceed, sir, to the consideration of an idea, that Congress may alter the place for choosing representatives in the general Congress: they may order that it may be at the extremity of a state, and, by their influence, may there prevail that persons may be chosen, who otherwise would not; by reason that a part of the qualified voters, in part of the state, would be so incommoded thereby, as to be debarred from their right as much as if they were bound at home. If so, such a circumstance would militate against the Constitution, which allows every man to vote. Altering the place will put it so far in the power of Congress, as that the representatives chosen will not be the true and genuine representatives of the people, but creatures of the Congress; and so far as they are so, so far are the people deprived of their rights, and the choice will be made in an irregular and unconstitutional manner. When this alteration is made by Congress, may we not suppose whose reelection will be provided for? Would it not be for those who were chosen before? The great law of self-preservation will prevail. It is true, they might, one time in a hundred, provide for a friend; but most commonly for themselves. But, however honorable the Convention may be who proposed this article, I think it is a genuine power for Congress to perpetuate themselves-a power that cannot be unexceptionably exercised in any case whatever. Knowing the numerous arts that designing men are [p.31] prone to, to secure their election and perpetuate themselves, it is my hearty wish that a rotation may be provided for. I respect and revere the Convention who proposed this Constitution. In order that the power given to Congress may be more palatable, some gentlemen are pleased to hold up the idea, that we may be blessed with sober, solid, upright men in Congress. I wish that we may be favored with such rulers; but I fear they will not all, if most, be the best moral or political characters. It gives me pain, and I believe it gives pain to others, thus to characterize the country in which I was born. I will endeavor to guard against any injurious reflections against my fellow-citizens. But they must have their true characters; and if I represent them wrong, I am willing to make concessions. I think that the operation of paper money, and the practice of privateering, have produced a gradual decay of morals; introduced pride, ambition, envy, lust of power; produced a decay of patriotism, and the love of commutative justice; and I am apprehensive these are the invariable concomitants of the luxury in which we are unblessedly involved, almost to our total destruction. In the lower ranks of people, luxury and avarice operate to the want of public duty and the payment of debts. These demonstrate the necessity of an energetic government. As people become more luxurious, they become more incapacitated for governing themselves. And are we not so? Alike people, alike prince. But suppose it should so happen, that the administrators of this Constitution should be preferable to the corrupt mass of the people, in point of manners, morals, and rectitude; power will give a keen edge to the principles I have mentioned. Ought we not, then, to put all checks and controls on governors for the public safety? Therefore, instead of giving Congress powers they may not abuse, we ought to withhold our hands from granting such as must be abused if exercised. This is a general observation. But to the point; at the time of the restoration, the people of England were so vexed and worn down by the anarchical and confused state of the nation, owing to the commonwealth not being well digested, that they took an opposite career; they run mad with loyalty, and would have given Charles any thing he could have asked. Pardon me, sir, if I say I feel the want of an energetic government, and the dangers to which this dear [p.32] country is reduced, as much as any citizen of the United States; but I cannot prevail on myself to adopt a government which wears the face of power, without examining it. Relinquishing a hair's breadth in a constitution, is a great deal; for by small degrees has liberty, in all nations, been wrested from the hands of the people. I know great powers are necessary to be given to Congress, but I wish they may be well guarded.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 2, p.56
This fact is true. The history of our own country is a melancholy proof of a similar truth. Massachusetts has paid while other states have been delinquent. How was the war carried on with the paper money? Requisitions on the states for that money were made. Who paid them? Massachusetts and a few others. A requisition of 29,000,000 dollars were quotaed on Massachusetts, and it was paid. This state has paid in her proportion of the old money. How comes it, then, that gentlemen have any of this money by them? Because the other states have shamefully neglected to pay their quotas. Do you ask for redress? You are scoffed at. The next requisition was for 11,000,000 of dollars, 6,000,000 of which were to be paid in facilities, the rest in silver money, for discharging the interest of the national debt. If the legislatures found a difficulty in paying the hard money, why did they not pay the paper? But 1,200,000 dollars have been paid. And six states have not paid a farthing of it.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 2, p.336
The want of the means of raising a general revenue has been the principal cause of our difficulties. I believe no man will doubt that, if our present Congress had money enough, there would be but few complaints of their weakness. Requisitions have perhaps been too much condemned. What has been their actual operation? Let us attend to experience, and see if they are such poor, unproductive things as is commonly supposed. If I calculate right, the requisitions for the ten years past have amounted to thirty-six millions of dollars; of which twenty-four millions, or two thirds, have been actually paid. Does not this fact warrant a conclusion that some reliance is to be placed on this mode? Besides, will any gentleman say that the states have generally been able to collect more than two thirds of their taxes from the people? The delinquency of some states has arisen from the fluctuations of paper money, &c. Indeed, it is my decided opinion, that no government, in the difficult circumstances which we have passed through, will be able to realize more than two thirds of the taxes it imposes. I might suggest two other considerations which have weight with me. There has probably been more money called for than was actually wanted, on the expectation of delinquencies; and it is equally probable that, in a short course of time, the increasing ability of the country will render requisitions a much more efficient mode of raising a revenue. The war left the people under very great burdens, and oppressed with both public and private debts. They are now fast emerging from their difficulties. Many individuals, without doubt, still feel great inconveniences; but they will find a gradual remedy.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 2, p.486
Permit me to make a single observation, in this place, on the restraints placed on the state governments. If only the following lines were inserted in this Constitution, I think it would be worth our adoption: "No state shall hereafter emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bills of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts." Fatal experience has taught us, dearly taught us, the value of these restraints. What is the consequence even at this moment? It is true, we have no tender law in Pennsylvania; but the moment you are conveyed across the Delaware, you find it haunt your journey, and follow close upon your heels. The paper passes commonly at twenty-five or thirty per cent. discount. How insecure is property!
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.27
I shall endeavor to satisfy the gentleman's political curiosity. Did not our compliance with any demand of Congress depend on our own free will? If we refused, I know of no coercive force to compel a compliance. After meeting in Convention, the deputies from the states communicated [p.28] their information to one another. On a review of our critical situation, and of the impossibility of introducing any degree of improvement into the old system, what ought they to have done? Would it not have been treason to return without proposing some scheme to relieve their distressed country? The honorable gentleman asks why we should adopt a system that shall annihilate and destroy our treaties with France and other nations. I think the misfortune is, that these treaties are violated already, under the honorable gentleman's favorite system. I conceive that our engagements with foreign nations are not at all affected by this system; for the 6th article expressly provides that "all debts contracted, and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution as under the Confederation." Does this system, then, cancel debts due to or from the continent? Is it not a well-known maxim that no change of situation can alter an obligation once rightly entered into? He also objects because nine states are sufficient to put the government in motion. What number of states ought we to have said? Ought we to have required the concurrence of all the thirteen? Rhode Island-in rebellion against integrity-Rhode Island plundered all the world by her paper money; and, notorious for her uniform opposition to every federal duty, would then have it in her power to defeat the Union; and may we not judge with absolute certainty, from her past conduct, that she would do so? Therefore, to have required the ratification of all the thirteen states would have been tantamount to returning without having done any thing. What other number would have been proper? Twelve? The same spirit that has actuated me in the whole progress of the business, would have prevented me from leaving it in the power of any one state to dissolve the Union; for would it not be lamentable that nothing could be done, for the defection of one state? A majority of the whole would have been too few. Nine states therefore seem to be a most proper number.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.75
If you wish to know the extent of such a scene, look at the history of England and Scotland before the union; you will see their borderers continually committing depredations. and cruelties of the most calamitous and deplorable nature, on one another. Mr. Chairman, were we struck off from the Union, and disputes of the back lands should be renewed, which are of the most alarming nature, and which must produce uncommon mischiefs, can you inform me how this great subject would be settled? Virginia has a large, unsettled country; she has at last quieted it. But there are great doubts whether she has taken the best way to effect it. If she has not, disagreeable consequences may ensue. I have [p.76] before hinted at some other causes of quarrel between the other states and us; particularly the hatred that would be generated by commercial competitions. I will only add, on that subject, that controversies may arise concerning the fisheries, which may terminate in wars. Paper money may also be an additional source of disputes. Rhode Island has been in one continued train of opposition to national duties and integrity; they have defrauded their creditors by their paper money. Other states have also had emissions of paper money, to the ruin of credit and commerce. May not Virginia, at a future day, also recur to the same expedient? Has Virginia no affection for paper money, or disposition to violate contracts? I fear she is as fond of these measures as most other states in the Union. The inhabitants of the adjacent states would be affected by the depreciation of paper money, which would assuredly produce a dispute with those states. This danger is taken away by the present Constitution, as it provides "that no state shall emit bills of credit." Maryland has counteracted the policy of this state frequently, and may be meditating examples of this kind again. Before the revolution, there was a contest about those back lands, in which even government was a party; it was put an end to by the war. Pennsylvania was ready to enter into a war with us, for the disputed lands near the boundaries, and nothing but the superior prudence of the man who was at the head of affairs in Virginia could have prevented it.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.76
Suppose the American spirit in the fullest vigor in Virginia; what military preparations and exertions is she capable of making? The other states have upwards of 330,000 men capable of bearing arms: this will be a good army, or they can very easily raise a good army out of so great a number. Our militia amounts to 50,000: even stretching it to the improbable amount (urged by some) of 60,000,-in case of an attack, what defence can we make? Who are militia? [p.77] Can we depend solely upon these? I will pay the last tribute of gratitude to the militia of my country: they performed some of the most gallant feats during the last war, and acted as nobly as men inured to other avocations could be expected to do; but, sir, it is dangerous to look to them as our sole protectors. Did ever militia defend a country? Those of Pennsylvania were said to differ very little from regulars; yet these, sir, were insufficient for the defence of that state. The militia of our country will be wanted for agriculture. On this noblest of arts depend the virtue and the very existence of a country; if it be neglected, every thing else must be in a state of ruin and decay. It must be neglected if those hands which ought to attend to it are occasionally called forth on military expeditions. Some also will be necessary for manufactures, and those mechanic arts which are necessary for the aid of the farmer and planter. If we had men sufficient in number to defend ourselves, it could not avail without other requisites. We must have a navy, to be supported in time of peace as well as war, to guard our coasts and defend us against invasions. The impossibility of building and equipping a fleet in short time constitutes the necessity of having a certain number of ships of war always ready in time of peace: the maintaining a navy will require money; and where, sir, can we get money for this and other purposes? How shall we raise it? Review the enormity of the debts due by this country. The amount of the debt we owe to the continent for bills of credit, rating at forty for one, will amount to between 6 and 700,000 pounds. There, is also due the continent the balance of requisitions due by us: and, in addition to this proportion of the old Continental debt, there are the foreign, domestic, state, military, and loan-office debts; to which when you add the British debt, where is the possibility of finding money to raise an army or navy? Review, then, your real ability. Shall we recur to loans? Nothing can be more impolitic; they impoverish a nation. We, sir, have nothing to repay them; nor, sir, can we procure them. Our numbers are daily increasing by immigration; but this, sir, will not relieve us when our credit is gone and it is impossible to borrow money. If the imposts and duties in Virginia, even on the present footing, be very unproductive, and not equal to our necessity, what would they be if we were [p.78] separated from the Union? From the first of September to the first of June, the amount put into the treasury is only £350,000, or a little more. But, sir, if smuggling be introduced in consequence of high duties, or otherwise, and the Potomac should be lost, what hope is there of getting money there? Shall we be asked if the impost would be bettered by the Union? I answer that it will, sir. Credit being restored, and confidence diffused in the country, merchants and men of wealth will be induced to come among us, immigration will increase, and commerce will flourish; the impost will therefore be more sure and productive.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.82
[p.82] Reflect but a moment on our situation. Does it not invite real hostility? The conduct of the British ministry to us is the natural effect of our unnerved government. Consider the commercial regulations between us and Maryland. Is it not known to gentlemen that the states have been making reprisals on each other-to obviate a repetition of which, in some degree, these regulations have been made? Can we not see, from this circumstance, the jealousy, rivalship, and hatred that would subsist between them, in case this state was out of the Union? They are importing states, and importing states will ever be competitors and rivals. Rhode Island and Connecticut have been on the point of war, on the subject of their paper money; Congress did not attempt to interpose. When Massachusetts was distressed by the late insurrection, Congress could not relieve her. Who headed that insurrection? Recollect the facility with which it was raised, and the very little ability of the ringleader, and you cannot but deplore the extreme debility of our merely nominal government. We are too despicable to be regarded by foreign nations. The defects of the Confederation consisted principally in the want of power: it had nominally powers, powers on paper, which it could not use. The power of making peace and war is expressly delegated to Congress; yet the power of granting passports, though within that of making peace and war, was considered by Virginia as belonging to herself. Without adequate powers vested in Congress, America cannot be respectable in the eyes of other nations. Congress, sir, ought to be fully vested with power to support the Union, protect the interests of the United States, maintain their commerce, and defend them from external invasions and insults, and internal insurrections; to maintain justice, and promote harmony and public tranquillity among the states.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.123
The people of Rhode Island may say their independence will be lost by a union with the other states; that they will be degraded, their consequence lost, and their liberties endangered. Many such specious and plausible arguments may be urged by their great men, who would no longer retain the importance which their paper money, and other causes, give them in a single state; yet the topographical situation of that state renders union more essential to its existence than to that of any other state. It is urged that the independence of Virginia will be gone by the union. Will not all the happy effects of the union I have just mentioned, and more, redound to Virginia from this union? But our representatives are suspected. On a further inspection of the system before you, this objection must vanish. Ten representatives will have no fellow-feeling for their constituents! Will not the people choose men of integrity, and in similar [p.124] circumstances with themselves, to represent them? What laws can they make that will not operate on themselves and friends, as well as on the rest of the people? Will the people reelect the same men to repeat oppressive legislation? Will the people commit suicide against themselves, and discard all those maxims and principles of interest and self-preservation which actuate mankind in all their transactions? Will the ten miles square transform our representatives into brutes and tyrants? I see no grounds to distrust them: but suppose they will be inclined to do us mischief; how can they effect it? If the federal necessities call for the sum of sixty-five thousand pounds, our proportion of that sum is ten thousand pounds. If, instead of this just proportion, they should require a greater sum, a conflict would ensue. What steps could they take to enforce the payment of the unjust and tyrannical demand? They must summon up all the genius of better men; but in case of actual violence, they could not raise the thousandth part of ten thousand pounds. In ease of a struggle, sir, the people would be irresistible. If they should be so liable to lapse from virtue, yet would not one man be found, out of a multitude, to guard the interests of the people-not one man to hold up his head to discover the tyrannical projects of a corrupt and depraved majority?
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.156
A number of characters, of the greatest eminence in this country, object to this government for its consolidating tendency. This is not imaginary. It is a formidable reality. If consolidation proves to be as mischievous to this country as it has been to other countries, what will the poor inhabitants of this country do? This government will operate like an ambuscade. It will destroy the state governments, and swallow the liberties of the people, without giving previous notice. If gentlemen are willing to run the hazard, let them run it; but I shall exculpate myself by my opposition and monitory warnings within these walls. But then comes paper money. We are at peace on this subject. Though this is a thing which that mighty federal Convention had no business with, yet I acknowledge that paper money would be the bane of this country. I detest it. Nothing can justify a people in resorting to it but extreme necessity. It is at rest, however, in this commonwealth. It is no longer solicited or advocated.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.163
[p.163] Bring them into contrast with Europeans. You will see an astonishing superiority over the latter. There has been a strict subordination to the laws. The honorable gentleman's office gave him an opportunity of viewing if the laws were administered so as to prevent riots, routs, and unlawful assemblies. From his then situation, he could have furnished us with the instances in which licentiousness trampled on the laws. Among all our troubles, we have paid almost to the last shilling for the sake of justice; we have paid as well as any state: I will not say better. To support the general government and our own legislature-to pay the interest of the public debts and defray contingencies-we have been heavily taxed. To add to these things, the distresses produced by paper money, and by tobacco contracts, were sufficient to render any people discontented. These, sir, were great temptations; but in the most severe conflict of misfortunes, this code of laws, this genius of Virginia-call it what you will-triumphed over every thing.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.182
But he tells you that the Mississippi is insecure unless you reject this system, and that the transactions relating to it were carried on under a veil of secrecy. His arguments on this subject are equally as defective as those I have just had under consideration. But I feel myself called on by the honorable gentleman to come forward and tell the truth about the transactions respecting the Mississippi. In every action of my life in which I have been concerned, whether as soldier or politician, the good of my country was my first wish. I have attended not only to the good of the United States, but also to that of particular districts. There are men of integrity and truth here who were also then in Congress. I call on them to put me right with respect to those transactions. As far as I could gather from what was then passing, I believe there was not a gentleman in that Congress who had an idea of surrendering the navigation of that river. They thought of the best mode of securing it: some thought one way, and some another way. I was one of those men who thought the mode which has been alluded to the best to secure it. I shall never deny that it was my opinion. I was one peculiarly interested. I had a fortune in that country, purchased, not by paper money, but by gold, to the amount of eight thousand pounds. But private interest could not have influenced me. The public welfare was my criterion in my opinion. I united private interest to public interest, not of the whole people of Virginia, but of the United States. I thought I was promoting the real interest of the people. But, says he, it was under the veil of secrecy. There was no peculiar or uncommon [p.183] desire manifested of concealing those transactions. They were carried on in the same manner with others of the same nature, and consonant to the principles of the Confederation. I saw no anxiety on the occasion. I wish he would send to the president to know their secrets. He would be gratified fully.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.207
If you mean to have a general government at all, ought it not to be empowered to raise money to pay the debts, and advance the prosperity, of the United States, in the manner that Congress shall think most eligible? What is the consequence of the contrary? You give it power by one hand, and take it away from it by the other. If it be defective in some parts, yet we ought to give due credit to those parts which are acknowledged to be good. Does not the prohibition of paper money merit our approbation? I approve of it because it prohibits tender-laws, secures the widows and orphans, and prevents the states from impairing contracts. I admire that part which forces Virginia to pay her debts. If we recur to the bill of rights, which the honorable gentleman speaks so much of, we shall find that it recommends justice. Had not this power been given, my affection for it would not have been so great. When it obliges us to tread in the path of virtue, when it takes away from the most influential man the power of directing our passions to his own emolument, and of trampling upon justice, I hope to be excused when I say, that, were it more objectionable than it is, I should vote for the Union.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.231
The honorable gentleman said that a government should ever depend on the affections of the people. It must be so. It is the best support it can have. This government merits the confidence of the people, and, I make no doubt, will have it. Then he informed us again of the disposition of Spain with respect to the Mississippi, and the conduct of the government with regard to it. To the debility of the Confederation alone may justly be imputed every cause of complaint on this subject. Whenever gentlemen will bring forward their objections, I trust we can prove that no danger to the navigation of that river can arise from the adoption of this Constitution. I beg those gentlemen who may be affected by it, to suspend their judgment till they hear it discussed. Will, says he, the adoption of this Constitution pay our debts? It will compel the states to pay their quotas. Without this, Virginia will be unable to pay. Unless all the states pay, she cannot. Though the states will not coin money, (as we are told,) yet this government will bring forth and proportion all the strength of the Union. That economy and industry are essential to our happiness, will be denied by no man. But the present government will not add to our industry. It takes away the incitements to industry, by rendering property insecure and unprotected. It is the paper on your table that will promote and encourage industry. New Hampshire and Rhode Island have rejected it, he tells us. New Hampshire, if my information be right, will certainly adopt it. The report spread in this country, of [p.232] which I have heard, is, that the representatives of that state having, on meeting, found they were instructed to vote against it, returned to their constituents without determining the question, to convince them of their being mistaken, and of the propriety of adopting it.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.258
At one period of the congressional history, they had the power to trample on the states. When they had that fund of paper money in their hands, and could carry on all their measures without any dependence on the states, was there any disposition to debase the state governments? All that municipal authority which was necessary to carry on the administration of the government, they still retained unimpaired. There was no attempt to diminish it.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.290
Paper money has been introduced. What did we do a few years ago? Struck off many millions, and by the charms of magic made the value of the emissions diminish by a forty-fold ratio. However unjust or unreasonable this might be, I suppose it was warranted by the inevitable laws of necessity. But, sir, there is no disposition now of having [p.291] paper money; this engine of iniquity is universally reprobated. But conventions give power, and conventions can take it away. This observation does not appear to me well founded. It is not so easy to dissolve a government like this. Its dissolution may be prevented by a trifling minority of the people of America. The consent of so many states is necessary to introduce amendments, that I fear they will with great difficulty be obtained. It is said that a strong government will increase our population by the addition of immigrants. From what quarter is immigration to proceed? From the arbitrary monarchies of Europe? I fear this kind of population would not add much to our happiness or improvement. It is supposed that, from the prevalence of the Orange faction, numbers will come hither from Holland, although it is not imagined the strength of the government will form the inducement. The exclusive power of legislation over the ten miles square is introduced by many gentlemen. I would not deny the utility of vesting the general government with a power of this kind, were it properly guarded. Perhaps I am mistaken, but it occurs to me that Congress may give exclusive privileges to merchants residing within the ten miles square, and that the same exclusive power of legislation will enable them to grant similar privileges to merchants in the strongholds within the states. I wish to know if there be any thing in the Constitution to prevent it. If there be, I have not been able to discover it. I may, perhaps, not thoroughly comprehend this part of the Constitution; but it strikes my mind that there is a possibility that, in process of time, and from the simple operation of effects from causes, the whole commerce of the United States may be exclusively carried on by merchants residing within the seat of government, and those places of arms which may he purchased of the state legislatures. How detrimental and injurious to the community, and how repugnant to the equal rights of mankind, such exclusive emoluments would he, I submit to the consideration of the committee. Things of a similar nature have happened in other countries; or else from whence have issued the Hanse Towns, Cinque Ports, and other places in Europe, which have peculiar privileges in commerce as well as in other matters? I do not offer this sentiment as an opinion, but a conjecture, and, in [p.292] this doubtful agitation of mind on a point of such infinite magnitude, only ask for information from the framers of the Constitution, whose superior opportunities must have furnished them with more ample lights on the subject than I am possessed of. Something is said on the other side with respect to the Mississippi. An honorable gentleman has mentioned, that he was satisfied that no member of Congress had any idea of giving up that river. Sir, I am not at liberty, from my situation, to enter into any investigation on the subject. I am free, however, to acknowledge that I have frequently heard the honorable member declare, that he conceived the object then in contemplation was the only method by which the right of that river could be ultimately secured. I have heard similar declarations from other members.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.318
The honorable member told us that he had doubts with respect to the judiciary department. I hope those doubts will be explained. He told us that his object was union. I admit that the reality of union, and not the name, is the object which most merits the attention of every friend to his country. He told you that you should hear many great, sounding words on our side of the question. We have heard the word union from him. I have heard no word so often pronounced in this house as he did this. I admit that the American Union is dear to every man. I admit that every man, who has three grains of information, must know and think that union is the best of all things. But, as I said before, we must not mistake the end for the means. If he can show that the rights of the Union are secure, we will consent. It has been sufficiently demonstrated that they are not secured. It sounds mighty prettily to gentlemen, to curse paper money and honestly pay debts. But apply to the situation of America, and you will find there are thousands and thousands of contracts, whereof equity forbids an [p.319] exact literal performance. Pass that government, and you will be bound hand and foot. There was an immense quantity of depreciated Continental paper money in circulation at the conclusion of the war. This money is in the hands of individuals to this day. The holders of this money may call for the nominal value, if this government be adopted. This state may be compelled to pay her proportion of that currency, pound for pound. Pass this government, and you will be carried to the federal court, (if I understand that paper right,) and you will be compelled to pay shilling for shilling. I doubt on the subject; at least, as a public man, I ought to have doubts. A state may be sued in the federal court, by the paper on your table. It appears to me, then, that the holder of the paper money may require shilling for shilling. If there be any latent remedy to prevent this, I hope it will be discovered.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.321
He tells us that responsibility is secured by direct taxation. Responsibility, instead of being increased, will be lost forever by it. In our state government, our representatives may be severally instructed by their constituents. There are, no persons to counteract their operations. They can have no excuse for deviating from our instructions. In the general government, other men have power over the business. When oppressions may take place, our representatives may tell us,-We contended for your interest; but we could not carry our point, because the representatives from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, &c.. were [p.322] against us. Thus, sir, you may see there is no real responsibility. He further said that there was such a contrariety of interests as to hinder a consolidation. I will only make one remark. There is a variety of interests. Some of the states owe a great deal on account of paper money; others very little; some of the Northern States have collected and barrelled up paper money. Virginia has sent thither her cash long ago. There is little or none of the Continental paper money retained in this state. Is it not their business to appreciate this money? Yes, and it will be your business to prevent it. But there will be a majority against you, and you will be obliged to pay your share of this money, in its nominal value. It has been said, by several gentlemen, that the freeness of elections would be promoted by throwing the country into large districts. I contend, sir, that it will have a contrary effect. It will destroy that connection that ought to subsist between the electors and the elected. If your elections be by districts, instead of counties, the people will not be acquainted with the candidates. They must, therefore, be directed in the elections by those who know them. So that, instead of a confidential connection between the electors and the elected, they will be absolutely unacquainted with each other. A common man must ask a man of influence how he is to proceed, and for whom he must vote. The elected, therefore, will be careless of the interest of the electors. It will be a common job to extort the suffrages of the common people for the most influential characters. The same men may be repeatedly elected by these means. This, sir, instead of pro-rooting the freedom of elections, leads us to an aristocracy. Consider the mode of elections in England. Behold the progress of an election in an English shire. A man of an enormous fortune will spend thirty or forty thousand pounds to get himself elected. This is frequently the case. Will the honorable gentleman say that a poor man, as enlightened as any man m the island, has an equal chance with a rich man, to be elected? He will stand no chance, though he may have the finest understanding of any man in the shire. It will be so here. Where is the chance that a poor man can come forward with the rich? The honorable gentleman will find that, instead of supporting democratical principles, it goes absolutely to destroy them.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.374
A worthy member has said-what had been often said before-that, suppose a war took took place, and the most experienced and able man was unfortunately in either house, he could not be made general, if the proposed [p.375] amendment was adopted. Had he read the clause, he would have discovered that it did not extend to military offices, and that the restriction extends to civil offices only. No case can exist, with respect to civil offices, that would occasion a loss to the public, if the members of both houses were precluded from holding any office during the time for which they were elected. The old Confederation is so defective in point of power, that no danger can result from creating offices under it; because those who hold them cannot be paid. The power of making paper money will not be exercised. This country is so thoroughly sensible of the impropriety of it, that no attempt will be made to make any more. So that no danger can arise, as they have not power to pay, if they appoint, officers. Why not make this system as secure as that, in this respect? A great number of offices will be created, to satisfy the wants of those who shall be elected. The worthy member says, the electors can alter them. But have the people the power of making honest men be elected? If he be an honest man, and his wages so low that he could not pay for his expenses, he could not serve them if elected. But there are many thirsting after offices more than public good. Political adventurers go up to Congress solely to advance their own particular emoluments. It is so in the British House of Commons. There are two sets always in that house-one, the landed interest, the most patriotic and respectable; the other, a set of dependants and fortune-hunters, who are elected for their own particular interest, and are willing to sell the interest of their constituents to the crown. The same division may happen among our representatives. This clause might as well not be guarded at all, as in this flimsy manner. They cannot be elected to offices for the terms for which they were elected, and continue to be members of Congress. But as they can create as many offices as they please for the particular accommodation of their friends, it might as well not be guarded at all. Upon the whole, I consider it entirely imperfect.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.471
Mr. HENRY apologized for repeatedly troubling the committee with his fears. But he apprehended the most serious consequences from these restrictions on the states. As they could not emit bills of credit, make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, pass ex post .facto laws, or impair the obligation of contracts,-though these restrictions were founded on good principles, yet he feared they would have this effect; that this state would be obliged to pay for her share of the Continental money, shilling for shilling. He asked gentlemen who had been in high authority, whether there were not some state speculations on this matter. He had been informed that some states had acquired vast quantities of that money, which they would be able to recover in its nominal value of the other states.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.472
Mr. GEORGE MASON declared he had been informed that some states had speculated most enormously in this matter. Many individuals had speculated so as to make great fortunes on the ruin of their fellow-citizens. The clause which has been read, as a sufficient security, seemed to him to be satisfactory as far as it went; that is, that the Continental money ought to stand on the same ground as it did previously, or that the claim should not be impaired. Under the Confederation, there were means of settling the old paper money, either in Congress or in the state legislatures. The money had at last depreciated to a thousand for one. The intention of state speculation, as well as individual speculation, was to get as much as possible of that money, in order to recover its nominal value. The means, says he, of settling this money, were in the hands of the old Congress. They could discharge it at its depreciated value. Is there that means here? No, sir, we must pay it shilling for shilling, or at least at the rate of one for forty. The amount will surpass the value of the property of the United States. Neither the state legislatures nor Congress can make an expost facto law. The nominal value must therefore be paid. ere is the power in the new government to settle this money so as to prevent the country from being ruined? When they prohibit the making ex post facto laws, they will have no authority to prevent our being ruined by paying that money at its nominal value.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.473
Mr. MADISON. Mr. Chairman, it appears to me immaterial who holds those great quantities of paper money which were in circulation before the peace, or at what value they acquired it; for it will not be affected by this Constitution. What would satisfy gentlemen more than that the new Constitution would place us in the same situation with the old? In this respect, it has done so. The claims against the United States are declared to be as valid as they were, but not more so. Would they have a particular specification of these matters? Where can there be any danger? Is there any reason to believe that the new rulers, one branch of which will be drawn from the mass of the people, will neglect or violate our interests more than the old? It rests on the obligation of public faith only, in the Articles of Confederation. It will be so in this Constitution, should it be adopted. If the new rulers should wish to enhance its value, in order to gratify its holders, how can they compel the states to pay it if the letter of the Constitution be observed? Do gentlemen wish the public creditors should be put in a worse situation? Would the people at large wish to satisfy creditors in such a manner as to ruin them? There cannot be a majority of the people of America that would wish to defraud their public creditors. I consider this as well guarded as possible. It rests on plain and honest principles. I cannot conceive how it could be more honorable or safe. [Mr. Madison made some other observations, which could not be heard.]
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.473
Mr. HENRY. Mr. Chairman, I am convinced, and I see clearly, that this paper money must be discharged, shilling for shilling. The honorable gentleman must see better [p.474] than I can, from his particular situation and judgment; but this has certainly escaped his attention. The question arising on the clause before you is, whether an act of the legislature of this state, for scaling money, will be of sufficient validity to exonerate you from paying the nominal value, when such a law, called ex post facto, and impairing the obligation of contracts, is expressly interdicted by it. Your hands are tied up by this clause, and you must pay shilling for shilling; and, in the last section, there is a clause that prohibits the general legislature from passing any ex post facto law; so that the hands of Congress are tied up, as well as the hands of the state legislatures.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.549
But the principal objection of that honorable gentleman was, that jurisdiction was given it in disputes between citizens of different states. I think, in general, those decisions might be left to the state tribunals; especially as citizens of one state are declared to be citizens of all. I think it will, in general, be so left by the regulations of Congress. But may no case happen in which it may be proper to give the federal courts jurisdiction in such a dispute? Suppose a bond given by a citizen of Rhode Island to one of our citizens. The regulations of that state being unfavorable to the claims of the other states, if he is obliged to go to Rhode Island to recover it, he will be obliged to accept payment of one third, or less, of his money. He cannot sue in the Supreme Court, but he may sue in the federal inferior court; and on judgment to be paid one for ten, he may get justice by appeal. Is it an eligible situation? Is it just that a man should run the risk of losing nine tenths of his claim? Ought he not to be able to carry it to that court where unworthy principles do not prevail? Paper money and tender laws may be passed in other states, in opposition to the federal principle, and restriction of this Constitution, and will need jurisdiction in the federal judiciary, to stop its pernicious effects.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 3, p.566
But we are told that it is wise, politic, and preventive of controversies with foreign nations. The treaty of peace with Great Britain does not require that creditors should be put in a better situation than they were, but that there should be no hindrance to the collection of debts. It is therefore unwise and impolitic to give those creditors such an advantage over the debtors. But the citizens of different states are to sue each other in these courts. No reliance is to be put on the state judiciaries. The fear of unjust regulations and decisions in the states is urged as the reason of this jurisdiction. Paper money in Rhode Island has been instanced by gentlemen. There is one clause in the Constitution which prevents the issuing of paper money. If this clause should pass, (and it is unanimously wished by every one that it should not be objected to,) I apprehend an execution in Rhode Island would be as good and effective as in any state in the Union.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.83
I conceive, sir, that the power given by that clause is absolutely necessary to the existence of the government. Gentlemen say that we are in such a situation that we cannot pay taxes. This, sir, is not a fair representation, in my opinion. The honest people of this country acknowledge themselves sufficiently able and willing to pay them. Were it a private contract, they would find means to pay them. The honest part of the community complain of the acts of the legislature. They complain that the legislature makes laws, not to suit their constituents, but themselves. The legislature, sir, never means to pay a just debt, as their constituents wish to do. Witness the laws made in this country. I will, however, be bold enough to say, that it is the [p.84] wish of the honest people to pay those taxes which are necessary for the support of the government. We have for a long time waited, in hope that our legislature would point out the manner of supporting the general government, and relieving us from our present ineligible situation. Every body was convinced of the necessity of this; but how is it to be done? The legislature have pointed out a mode-their old, favorite mode-they have they have made paper money; purchased tobacco at an extravagant price, and sold it at a considerable loss; they have received about a dollar in the pound. Have we any ground to hope that we shall be in a better situation?
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.86
We can borrow money with ease, and on advantageous terms, when it shall be known that Congress will have that power which all governments ought to have. Congress will not pay their debts in paper money. I am willing to trust this article to Congress, because I have no reason to think that our government will be better than it has been. Perhaps I have spoken too liberally of the legislature before; but I do not expect that they will ever, without a radical change of men and measures, wish to put the general government on a better footing. It is not the poor man who opposes the payment of those just debts to which we owe our independence and political existence, but the rich miser. Not the poor, but the rich, shudder at the idea of taxes. I have no dread that Congress will distress us; nor have I any fear that the tax will be embezzled by officers. Industry and economy will be promoted, and money will be easier got than ever it has been yet. The taxes will be paid by the people when called upon. I trust that all honest, industrious people will think, with me, that Congress ought to be possessed of the power of applying immediately to the [p.87] people for its support, without the interposition of the state legislatures. I have no confidence in the legislature: the people do not suppose them to be honest men.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.87
Mr. JOSEPH M'DOWALL. Mr. Chairman, this is a power that I will never agree to give up from the hands of the people of this country. We know that the amount of the imposts will be trifling, and that the expenses of this government will be very great; consequently the taxes will be very high. The tax-gatherers will be sent, and our property will be wrested out of our hands. The Senate is most dangerously constructed. Our only security is the House of Representatives. They may be continued at Congress [p.88] eight or ten years. At such a distance from their homes, and for so long a time, they will have no feeling for, nor any knowledge of, the situation of the people. If elected from the seaports, they will not know the western part of the country, and vice versa. Two cooperative powers cannot exist together. One must submit. The inferior must give up to the superior. While I am up, I will say something to what has been said by the gentleman to ridicule the General Assembly. He represents the legislature in a very opprobrious light. It is very astonishing that the people should choose men of such characters to represent them. If the people be virtuous, why should they put confidence in men of a contrary disposition? As to paper money, it was the result of necessity. We were involved in a great war. What money had been in the country was sent to other parts of the world. What would have been the consequence if paper money had not been made? We must have been undone. Our political existence must have been destroyed. The extreme scarcity of specie, with other good causes, particularly the solicitation of the officers to receive it at its nominal value, for their pay, produced subsequent emissions. He tells us that all the people wish this power to be given-that the mode of payment need only be pointed out, and that they will willingly pay. How are they to raise the money? Have they it in their chests? Suppose, for instance, there be a tax of two shillings per hundred laid on land; where is the money to pay it? We have it not. I am acquainted with the people. I know their situation. They have no money. Requisitions may yet be complied with. Industry and frugality may enable the people to pay moderate taxes, if laid by those who have a knowledge of their situation, and a feeling for them. If the tax-gatherers come upon us, they will, like the locusts of old, destroy us. They will have pretty high salaries, and exert themselves to oppress us. When we consider these things, we should be cautious. They will be weighed, I trust, by the House. Nothing said by the gentlemen on the other side has obviated my objections.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.90
[p.90] Something has been said with regard to their paper money. I think very little can be done in favor of it; much may be said, very justly, in favor of it.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.90
I then thought, and still do, that those gentlemen might have had more advantage by not receiving that kind of payment. It would have been better for them, and for the country, had it not been emitted. We have involved ourselves in a debt of £200,000. We have not, with this sum, honestly and fairly paid £50,000. Was this right? But, say they, there was no circulating medium. This want was necessary to be supplied. It is a doubt with me whether the circulating medium be increased by an emission of paper currency. Before the emission of the paper money, there was a great deal of hard money among us. For thirty years past, I had not known so much specie in circulation as we had at the emission of paper money, in 1788. That medium was increasing daily. People from abroad bring specie; for, thank God, our country produces articles which are every where in demand. There is more specie in the country than is generally imagined; but the proprietors keep it locked up. No man will part with his specie. It lies in his chest. It is asked, Why not lend it out? The answer is obvious-that, should he once let it get out of his power, he never can recover the whole of it. If he bring suit, he will obtain a verdict for one half of it. This is the reason of our poverty. The scarcity of money must be, in some degree, owing to this; and the specie which is now in this country might as well be in any other part of the world. If our trade was once on a respectable footing, we should find means of paying that enormous debt.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.156
It is necessary in all governments, but particularly in a federal government, that its judiciary should be competent to the decision of all questions arising out of the constitution. If I understand the gentleman right, his objection was not to the defined jurisdiction, but to the general jurisdiction, which is expressed thus: "The judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;" and also the appellate jurisdiction in some instances. Every member who has read the Constitution with attention must observe that there are certain fundamental principles in it, beth of a positive and negative nature, which, being intended for the general advantage of the community, ought not to be violated by any future legislation of the particular states. Every member will agree that the positive regulations ought to be carried into execution, and that the negative restrictions ought not to disregarded or violated. Without a judiciary, the injunctions of the Constitution may be disobeyed, and the positive regulations neglected or contravened. There are certain prohibitory provisions in this Constitution, the wisdom and propriety of which must strike every reflecting mind, and certainly meet with the warmest approbation of every citizen of this state. It provides, "that no state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws; that no preference shall be given, by any regulation of commerce or revenue, to the ports of one state over those of another; and that no state shall emit bills of credit, make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts." These restrictions ought to supersede the laws of particular states. With respect to the prohibitory provision-that no duty or impost shall be laid by any [p.157] particular state-which is so highly in favor of us and the other non-importing states, the importing states might make laws laying duties notwithstanding, and the Constitution might be violated with impunity, if there were no power in the general government to correct and counteract such laws. This great object can only be safely and completely obtained by the instrumentality of the federal judiciary. Would not Virginia, who has raised many thousand pounds out of our citizens by her imposts, still avail herself of the same advantage if there were no constitutional power to counteract her regulations? If cases arising under the Constitution were left to her own courts, might she not still continue the same practices? But we are now to look for justice to the controlling power of the judiciary of the United States. If the Virginians were to continue to oppress us by laying duties, we can be relieved by a recurrence to the general judiciary. This restriction in the Constitution is a fundamental principle, which is not to be violated, but which would have been a dead letter, were there no judiciary constituted to enforce obedience to it. Paper money and private contracts were in the same condition. Without a general controlling judiciary, laws might be made in particular states to enable its citizens to defraud the citizens of other states. Is it probable, if a citizen of South Carolina owed a sum of money to a citizen of this state, that the latter would be certain of recovering the full value in their courts? That state might in future, as they have already done, make pine-barren acts to discharge their debts. They might say that our Citizens should be paid in sterile, inarable lands, at an extravagant price. They might pass the most iniquitous instalment laws, procrastinating the payment of debts due from their citizens, for years nay, for ages. Is it probable that we should get justice from their own judiciary, who might consider themselves obliged to obey the laws of their own state? Where, then, are we to look for justice? To the judiciary of the United States. Gentlemen must have observed the contracted and narrow-minded regulations of the individual states, and their predominant disposition to advance the interests of their own citizens to the prejudice of others. Will not these evils be continued if there be no restraint? The people of the United States have one common interest; they are all members of the same community, [p.158] and ought to have justice administered to them equally in every part of the continent, in the same manner, with the same despatch, and on the same principles. It is therefore absolutely necessary that the judiciary of the Union should have jurisdiction in all cases arising in law and equity under the Constitution. Surely there should be somewhere a constitutional authority for carrying into execution constitutional provisions; otherwise, as I have already said, they would be a dead letter.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.159
The security of impartiality is the principal reason for giving up the ultimate decision of controversies between citizens of different states. It is essential to the interest of agriculture and commerce that the hands of the states should be bound from making paper money, installment laws, or pine-barren acts. By such iniquitous laws the merchant or farmer may be defrauded of a considerable part of his just claims. But in the federal court, real money will be recovered with that speed which is necessary to accommodate the circumstances of individuals. The tedious delays of judicial proceedings, at present, in some states, are ruinous to creditors. In Virginia, many suits are twenty or thirty years spun out by legal ingenuity, and the defective construction of their judiciary. A citizen of Massachusetts or this country might be ruined before he could recover a debt in that state. It is necessary, therefore, in order to obtain justice, that we recur to the judiciary of the United States, where justice must be equally administered, and where a debt may be recovered from the citizen of one state as soon as from the citizen of another.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.168
Mr. LOCKE. Mr. Chairman, I wish to throw some particular light upon the subject, according to my conceptions. I think the Constitution neither safe nor beneficial, as it grants powers unbounded with restrictions. One gentleman has said that it was necessary to give cognizance of causes to the federal court, because there was partiality in the judges of the states; that the state judges could not be depended upon in causes arising under the Constitution and laws of the Union. I agree that impartiality in judges is indispensable; but I think this alteration will not produce more impartiality than there is now in our courts, whatever evils it may bring forth. Must there not be judges in the federal [p.169] courts, and those judges taken from some of the states? The same partiality, therefore, may be in them. For my part, I think it derogatory to the honor of this state to give this jurisdiction to the federal courts. It must be supposed that the same passions, dispositions, and failings of humanity which attend the State judges, will be equally the lot of the federal judges. To justify giving this cognizance to those courts, it must be supposed that all justice and equity are given up at once in the states. Such reasoning is very strange to me. I fear greatly for this state, and for other states. I find there has a considerable stress been laid upon the injustice of laws made heretofore. Great reflections are thrown on South Carolina for passing pine-barren and installment laws, and on this state for making paper money. I wish those gentlemen who made those observations would consider the necessity which compelled us in a great measure to make such money. I never thought the. law which authorized it a good law. If the evil could have been avoided, it would have been a very bad law; but necessity, sir, justified it in some degree. I believe I have gained as little by it as any in this house. If we are to judge of the future by what we have seen, we shall find as much or more injustice in Congress than in our legislature. Necessity compelled them to pass the law, in order to save vast numbers of people from ruin. I hope to be excused in observing that it would have been hard for our late Continental army to lay down their arms, with which they had valiantly and successfully fought for their country, without receiving or being promised and assured of some compensation for their past services. What a situation would this country have been in, if they had had the power over the purse and sword! If they had the powers given up by this Constitution, what a wretched situation would this country have been in! Congress was unable to pay them, but passed many resolutions and laws in their favor, particularly one that each state should make up the depreciation of the pay of the Continental line, who were distressed for the want of an adequate compensation for their services. This state could not pay her proportion in specie. To have laid a tax for that purpose would have been oppressive. What was to be done? The only expedient was to pass a law to make paper money, and make it a tender. The Continental line was satisfied, and [p.170] approved of the measure, it being done at their instance in some degree. Notwithstanding it was supposed to be highly beneficial to the state, it is found to be injurious to it. Saving expense is a very great object, but this incurred much expense. This subject has for .many years embroiled the state; but the situation of the country, and the distress of the people are so great, that the public measures must be accommodated to their circumstances with peculiar delicacy and caution, or another insurrection may be the consequence. As to what the gentleman said of the trial by jury, it surprises me much to hear gentlemen of such great abilities speak such language. It is clearly insecure, nor can ingenuity and subtle arguments prove the contrary. I trust this country is too sensible of the value of liberty, and her citizens have bought it too dearly, to give it up hastily.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.172
Mr. MACLAINE. Mr. Chairman, a gentleman lately up (Mr. Locke) has informed us of his doubts and fears respecting the federal courts. He is afraid for this state and other states. He supposes that the idea of cognizance of the laws of the Union to federal courts, must have arisen from suspicions of partiality and want of common integrity in our state judges. The worthy gentleman is mistaken in his construction of what I said. I did not personally reflect on the members of our state judiciary; nor did I impute the impropriety of vesting the state .judiciaries with exclusive jurisdiction over the laws of the Union, and cases arising under the Constitution, to any want of probity in the judges. But if they be the judges of the local or state laws, and receive emoluments for acting in that capacity, they will be improper persons to judge of the laws of the Union. A federal judge ought to be solely governed by the laws of the United States, and receive his salary from the treasury of the United States. It is impossible for any judges, receiving pay from a single state, to be impartial in cases where the local laws or interests of that state clash with the laws of the Union, or the general interests of America. We have instances here which prove this partiality in such cases. It is also so in other states. The gentleman has thrown out something very uncommon. He likens the power given by this Constitution to giving the late army the purse and the sword. I am much astonished that such an idea should be thrown out by that gentleman, because his respectability is well known. If he considers for a moment, he must see that Iris observation is bad, and that the comparison is extremely absurd and improper. The purse and the sword must be given to every government. The sword is given to the executive magistrate; but the purse remains, by this Constitution, in the representatives of the people. We know very [p.173] well that they cannot raise one shilling but by the consent of the representatives of the people. Money bills do not even originate in the Senate; they originate solely in the other house. Every appropriation must be by law. We know, therefore, that no executive magistrate or officer can appropriate a shilling, but as he is authorized by law. With respect to paper money, the gentleman has acted and spoken with great candor. He was against paper money from the first emission. There was no other way to satisfy the late .army but by paper money, there being not a shilling of specie m the state. There were other modes adopted by other states, which did not produce such inconveniences. There was, however, a considerable majority of that assembly who adopted the idea, that not one shilling more paper money should be made, because of the evil consequences that must necessarily follow. The experience of this country, for many years, has proved that such emissions involve us in debts and distresses, destroy our credit, and produce no good consequences; and yet, contrary to all good policy, the evil was repeated.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.173
With respect to our public security and paper money, the apprehensions of gentlemen are groundless. I believe this Constitution cannot affect them at all. In the 10th section of the 1st article, it is provided, among other restrictions, " that no state shall emit bills of credit, make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, or pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts." Now, sir, this has no retrospective view. It looks to futurity. It is conceived by many people, that the moment this new Constitution is adopted, our present paper money will sink to nothing. For my part, I believe that, instead of sinking, it will appreciate. If we adopt, it will rise in value, so that twenty shillings of it will be equal to two Spanish milled dollars and a half. Paper money is as good as gold and silver where there are proper funds to redeem it, and no danger of its being increased. Before the late war, our paper money fluctuated in value. Thirty-six years ago, when I came into this country, our paper money was at seven shillings to the dollar. A few years before the late war, the merchants of Great Britain remonstrated to the ministry of that country, that they lost much of their debts by paper money losing its value. This [p.174] caused an order to be made through all the states not to pass any money bills whatever. The effect of this was, that our paper money appreciated. At the commencement of the war, our paper money m circulation was equal to gold or silver. But it is said that, on adoption, all debts contracted heretofore must then be paid in gold or silver coin. I believe that, if any gentleman will attend to the clause above recited, he will find that it has no retrospective, but a prospective view. It does not look back, but forward. It does not destroy the paper money which is now actually made, but prevents us from making any more. This is much in our favor, because we may pay in the money we contracted for, (or such as is equal in value to it;) and the very restriction against an increase of it will add to its value. It is in the power of the legislature to establish a scale of depreciation, to fix the value of it. There is nothing against this in the Constitution. On the contrary, it favors it. I should be much injured if it was really to be the case that the paper money should sink. After the Constitution was adopted, I should think myself, as a holder of our paper money, possessed of Continental security. I am convinced our money will be good money; and if I was to speculate in any thing, I would in paper money, though I never did speculate. I should be satisfied that I should make a profit. Why say that the state security will be paid in gold and silver after all these things are considered? Every real, actual debt of the state ought to be discharged in real, and not nominal value, at any rate.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.180
Mr. BLOODWORTH. This clause will be the destruction of every law which will come in competition with the laws of the United States. Those laws and regulations which have been, or shall be, made in this state, must be destroyed by it, if they come in Competition with the powers of Congress. Is it not necessary to define the extent of its operation? Is not the force of our tender-laws destroyed by it? The worthy gentleman from Wilmington has endeavored to obviate the objection as to the Constitution's destroying the credit of our paper money, and paying debts in coin, but unsatisfactorily to me. A man assigns, by legal action, a bend to a man in another state; could that bond be paid by money? I know it is very easy to be wrong. I am conscious of being frequently so. I endeavor to be open to conviction. This clause seems to me too general, and I think its extent ought to be limited and defined. I should suppose every reasonable man would think some amendments to it were necessary.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.181
But what is the sovereignty, and who is Congress? One branch, the people at large; and the other branch, the states by their representatives. Do people fear the delegation of power to themselves-to their own representatives? But he objects that the laws of the Union are to be the supreme laws of the land. Is it not proper that their laws should be the laws of the land, and paramount to those of any particular state? or is it proper that the laws of any particular state should control the laws of the United States? Shall a part control the whole? To permit the local laws of any state to control the laws of the Union, would be to give the general government no powers at all. If the judges are not to be bound by it, the powers of Congress will be nugatory. This is self-evident and plain. Bring it home to every understanding; it is so clear it will force itself upon it. The worthy gentleman says, in contradiction to what I have observed, that the clause which restrains the states from emitting paper money, &c., will operate upon the present circulating paper money, and that gold and silver must pay paper contracts. The clause cannot possibly have a retrospective view. It cannot affect the existing currency in any manner, except to enhance its value by the prohibition of future emissions. It is contrary to the universal principles of jurisprudence, that a law or constitution should have a retrospective operation, unless it be expressly provided that it shall. Does he deny the power of the legislature to fix a scale of depreciation as a criterion to regulate contracts made for depreciated money? As to the question he has put, of an assigned bond, I answer that it can be paid with paper money. For this reason, the assignee can be in no better situation than the assignor. If it be regularly transferred, it will appear what person had the bond originally, and the present possessor can recover nothing but what the original holder of it could. Another reason which may be urged is, that the federal courts could have no cognizance of such a suit. Those courts have no jurisdiction in cases of debt between the citizens of the same state. The assignor being a citizen of the same state with the debtor and assigning it to a citizen of another state, to avoid the intent of the [p.182] Constitution, the assignee can derive no advantage from the assignment, except what the assignor had a right to; and consequently the gentleman's objection falls to the ground.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.182
Mr. DAVIE. Mr. Chairman: permit me, sir, to make a few observations on the operation of the clause so often mentioned. This Constitution, as to the powers therein granted, is constantly to be the supreme law of the land. Every power ceded by it must be executed, without being counteracted by the laws or constitutions of the individual states. Gentlemen should distinguish that it is not the supreme law in the exercise of a power not granted. It can be supreme only in cases consistent with the powers specially granted, and not in usurpations. If you grant any power to the federal government, the laws made in pursuance of that power must be supreme, and uncontrolled in their operation. This consequence is involved in the very nature and necessity of the thing. The only rational inquiry is, whether those powers are necessary, and whether they are properly granted. To say that you have vested the federal government with power to legislate for the Union, and then deny the supremacy of the laws, is a solecism in terms. With respect to its [p.183] operation on our own paper money, I believe that a little consideration will satisfy every man that it cannot have the effect asserted by the gentleman from New Hanover. The Federal Convention knew that several states had large sums of paper money in circulation, and that it was an interesting property, and they were sensible that those states would never consent to its immediate destruction, or ratify any system that would have that operation. The mischief already done could not be repaired: all that could be done was, to form some limitation to this great political evil. As the paper money had become private property, and the object of numberless contracts, it could not be destroyed or intermeddled with in that situation, although its baneful tendency was obvious and undeniable. It was, however, effecting an important object to put bounds to this growing mischief. If the states had been compelled to sink the paper money instantly, the remedy might be worse than the disease. As we could not put an immediate end to it, we were content with prohibiting its future increase, looking forward to its entire extinguishment when the states that had an emission circulating should be able to call it in by a gradual redemption.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.183
In Pennsylvania, their paper money was not a tender in discharge of private contracts. In South Carolina, their bills became eventually a tender; and in Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, the paper money was made a legal tender in all cases whatsoever. The other states were sensible that the destruction of the circulating paper would be a violation of the rights of private property, and that such a measure would render the accession of those states to the system absolutely impracticable. The injustice and pernicious tendency of this disgraceful policy were viewed with great indignation by the states which adhered. to the principles of justice. In Rhode Island, the paper money had depreciated to eight for one, and a hundred per cent. with us. The people of Massachusetts and Connecticut had been great sufferers by the dishonesty of Rhode Island, and similar complaints existed against this state. This clause became in some measure a preliminary with the gentlemen who represented the other states. "You have," said they, " by your iniquitous laws and paper emissions shamefully defrauded our citizens. The Confederation [p.184] prevented our compelling you to do them justice; but before we confederate with you again, you must not only agree to be honest, but put it out of your power to be otherwise." Sir, a member from Rhode Island itself could not have set his face against such language. The clause was, I believe, unanimously assented to: it has only a future aspect, and can by no means have a retrospective operation; and I trust the principles upon which the Convention proceeded will meet the approbation of every honest man.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.184
Mr. CABARRUS. Mr. Chairman, I contend that the clause which prohibits the states from emitting bills of credit will not affect our present paper money. The clause has no retrospective view. This Constitution declares, in the most positive terms, that no ex post facto law shall be passed by the general government. Were this clause to operate retrospectively, it would clearly be ex post facto, and repugnant to the express provision of the Constitution. How, then, in the name of God, can the Constitution take our paper money away? If we have contracted for a sum of money, we ought to pay according. to the nature of our contract. Every. honest man will pay m specie who engaged to pay it. But if we have contracted for a sum of paper money, it must be clear to every man in this committee, that we shall pay in paper money. This is a Constitution for the future government of the United States. It does not look back. Every gentleman must be satisfied, on the least reflection, that our paper money will not be destroyed. To say that it will be destroyed, is a popular argument, but not founded in fact, in my opinion. I had my doubts, but on consideration, I am satisfied.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.184
Mr. BLOODWORTH. Mr. Chairman, I beg leave to ask if the payment of sums now due be ex post facto. Will it be an ex post facto law to compel the payment of money now due in silver coin? If suit be brought in the federal court against one of our citizens, for a sum of money, will paper money be received to satisfy the judgment? I inquire for information; my mind is not yet satisfied. It has been said that we are to send our own gentlemen to represent us, and that there is not the least doubt they will put that construction on it which will be most agreeable to the people they represent. But it behooves us to consider whether they can do so if they would, when they mix with the body of [p.185] Congress. The Northern States are much more populous than the Southern ones. To the north of the Susquehannah there are thirty-six representatives, and to the south of it only twenty-nine. They will always outvote us. Sir, we ought to be particular in adopting a Constitution which may destroy our currency, when it is to be the supreme law of the land, and prohibits the emission of paper money. I am not, for my own part, for giving an indefinite power. Gentlemen of the best abilities differ in the construction of the Constitution. The members of Congress will differ too. Human nature is fallible. I am not for throwing ourselves out of the Union; but we ought to be cautious by proposing amendments. The majority in several great adopting states was very trifling. Several of them have proposed amendments, but not in the mode most satisfactory to my mind. I hope this Convention never will adopt it till the amendments are actually obtained.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.185
Mr. IREDELL. Mr. Chairman, with respect to this clause, it cannot have the operation contended for. There is nothing in the Constitution which affects our present paper money. It prohibits, for the future, the emitting of any, but it does not interfere with the paper money now actually in circulation in several states. There is an express clause which protects it. It provides that there shall be no ex post facto law. This would be ex post facto, if the construction contended for were right, as has been observed by another gentleman. If a suit were brought against a man in the federal court, and execution should go against his property, I apprehend he would, under this Constitution, have a right to pay our paper money, there being nothing in the Constitution taking away the validity of it. Every individual in the United States will keep his eye watchfully over those who administer the general government, and no usurpation of power will be acquiesced in. The possibility of usurping powers ought not to be objected against it. Abuse may happen in any government. The only resource against usurpation is the inherent right of the people to prevent its exercise. This is the case in all free governments in the world. The people will resist if the government usurp powers not delegated to it. We must run the risk of abuse. We must take care to give no more power than is necessary [p.186] but, having given that, we must submit to the possible dangers arising from it.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.188
Mr. J. M'DOWALL wished to know how the taxes are to be paid which Congress were to lay in this state. He asked if paper money would discharge them. He calculated that the taxes would be higher, and did not know how they could be discharged; for, says he, every man is to pay so much more, and the poor man has not the money locked up in his chest. He was of opinion that our laws could be repealed entirely by those of Congress.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.188
Mr. MACLAINE. Mr. Chairman, taxes must be paid in gold or silver coin, and not in imaginary money. As to the subject of taxation, it has been the opinion of many intelligent men that there will be no taxes laid immediately, or, if any, that they will be very inconsiderable. There will be no occasion for it, as proper regulations will raise very large sums of money. We know that Congress will have sufficient power to make such regulations. The moment that the Constitution is established, Congress will have credit with foreign nations. Our situation being known, they can borrow any sum. It will be better for them to raise any money they want at present by borrowing than by taxation. It is well known that in this country gold and silver vanish when [p.189] paper money is made. When we adopt, if ever, gold and silver will again appear in circulation. People will not let their hard money go, because they know that paper money cannot repay it. After the war, we had more money in gold and silver, in circulation, than we have nominal money now. Suppose Congress wished to raise a million of money more than the imposts. Suppose they borrow it. They can easily borrow it in Europe at four per cent. The interest of that sum will be but £40,000. So that the people, instead of having the whole £1,000,000 to pay, will have but £40,000 to pay, which will hardly be felt. The proportion of £40,000 for this state would be a trifle. In seven years' time, the people would be able, by only being obliged to pay the interest annually, to save money, and pay the whole principal, perhaps, afterwards, without much difficulty. Congress will not lay a single tax when it is not to the advantage of the people at large. The western lands will also be a considerable fired. The sale of them will aid the revenue greatly, and we have reason to believe the impost will be productive.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.238
The gentleman says he has a protect in his pocket, which, he risks his life, will induce the other states to give us a share of the general impost. I am fully satisfied, sir, this project will not answer the purpose, and the forfeiture of his life will be no compensation for irretrievable public loss. Every man who knows the resources of our commerce, and our situation, will be clearly convinced that the project cannot succeed. The whole produce of our duties, beth by land and water, is very trifling. For several years past, it has not exceeded £10,000 of our own paper money. It will not be more-probably less-if we we were out of the Union. The whole proportion of this state of the public debts, except this mere pittance, must be raised from the people by direct and immediate taxation.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.247
"25. That Congress shall not, directly or indirectly, either by themselves or through the judiciary, interfere with any one of the states in the redemption of paper money already emitted and now in circulation, or in liquidating and discharging the public securities of any one of the states. but each and every state shall have the exclusive right of making such laws and regulations, for the above purposes, as they shall think proper.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.252
"Resolved, unanimously, That the honorable the president be requested to transmit to Congress, and to the executives of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina. and Georgia, a copy of the resolution of the committee of the whole Convention on the subject of the Constitution proposed for the government of the United States, concurred with by this Convention, together with a copy of the resolutions on the subject of impost and paper money."
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.288
Still greater difficulties would be found in the choice of a President, because he must have a majority of ninety-one votes in his favor. For the first President there was one man to whom all America looked up, (General Washington,) and for whom he most heartily would vote; but after that gentleman's administration ceased, where could they point out another so highly respected as to concentre a majority of ninety-one persons in his favor? and if no gentleman should be fully returned, then the government must stand still. He went over much of the ground which he had trod the preceding day, relative to the Eastern States having been so guarded in what they had conceded to gain the regulation of our commerce, which threw into their hands the carrying trade, and put it in their power to lay us under payment of whatever freightage they thought proper to impose. It was their interest to do so, and no person could doubt but they would promote it by every means in their power. He wished our delegates had sufficiently attended to this point in the Convention-had been more attentive to this object, and taken care to have it expressed, in this Constitution, that all our ports were open to all nations; instead of putting us in the power of a. set of men who may fritter away the value of our produce to a little or nothing, by compelling payment of exorbitant freightage. Neither did he believe it was in the power of the Eastern States to furnish a [p.289] sufficient number of ships to carry our produce. It was, indeed, a general way of talking, that the Eastern States had a great number of seamen, a vast number of ships; but where were they? Why did they not come here now, when ships are greatly wanted? He should always wish to give them a preference, and so, no doubt, would many other gentlemen; and yet very few ships come here from the Eastern States. Another exceptionable point was, that we were to give up the power of taxing ourselves. During our connection with Great Britain, she left us the power of raising money in any way most convenient: a certain sum was only required to defray the public wants, but no mode of collecting it ever prescribed. In this new Constitution, every thing is transferred, not so much power being left us as Lord North offered to guaranty to us in his conciliatory plan. Look at the articles of union ratified between England and Scotland. How cautiously had the latter taken care of her interest in reserving all the forms of law-her representation in Parliament-the right of taxation-the management of her revenue-and all her revenue and all her local local and municipal interests! Why take from us the right of paying our delegates, and pay them from the federal treasury? He remembered formerly what a flame was raised in Massachusetts, on account of Great Britain assuming the payment of salaries to judges and other state officers; and that this conduct was considered as originating in a design to destroy the independence of their government. Our local expenses had been nearly defrayed by our impost duty; but now that this was given away, and thrown into a general fired, for the use of all the states indiscriminately, we should be obliged to augment our taxes to carry on our local government, notwithstanding we were to pay a poll tax for our negroes. Palter money, too, was another article of restraint, and a popular point with many; but what evils had we ever experienced by issuing a little paper money to relieve ourselves from any exigency that pressed us? We had now a circulating medium which every body took. We used formerly to issue paper bills every year, and recall them every five, with great convenience and advantage. Had not pa per money carried us triumphantly through the war, extricated us from difficulties generally supposed to be insurmountable, and fully established us in our independence? [p.290] and now every thing is so changed that an entire stop must be put to any more paper emissions, however great our distress may be. It was true, no article of the Constitution declared there should not be jury trials in civil cases; yet this must be implied, because it stated that all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be tried by a jury. But even if trials by jury were allowed, could any person rest satisfied with a mode of trial which prevents the parties from being obliged to bring a cause for discussion before a jury of men chosen from the vicinage, in a manner conformable to the present administration of justice, which had stood the test of time and experience, and ever been highly approved of? Mr. Lowndes expatiated some time on the nature of compacts, the sacred light in which they were held by all nations, and solemnly called on the house to consider whether it would not be better to add strength to the old Confederation, instead of hastily adopting another; asking whether a man could be looked on as wise, who, possessing a magnificent building, upon discovering a flaw, instead of repairing the injury, should pull it down, and build another. Indeed, he could not understand with what propriety the Convention proceeded to change the Confederation; for every person with whom he had conversed on this subject concurred in opinion that the sole object of appointing a convention was to inquire what alterations were necessary in the Confederation, in order that it might answer those salutary purposes for which it was originally intended.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.304
In all elections of a chief magistrate, foreign influence is to be guarded against. Here it is very carefully so; and it is almost impossible for any foreign power to influence thirteen different sets of electors, distributed throughout the [p.305] states, front New Hampshire to Georgia. By this mode, also, and for the same reason, the dangers of intrigue and corruption are avoided, and a variety of other inconveniences, which must have arisen if the electors from the different states had been directed to assemble at one place, or if either branch of the legislature (in case the majority of electors did not fix upon the same person) might have chosen a President who had not been previously put in nomination by the people. I have before spoken of the policy and justice of vesting the majority of Congress with the power of making commercial regulations, and the necessity there is, in all well-constituted republics, that the majority should control the minority; and I should have had a very strong objection if it had contained the restrictive clause the honorable gentleman appears so anxious for, "that Congress should not have it in their power to prevent the ships of any nation from entering our ports." I cannot think it would have been prudent or fitting to have given the ships of all foreign nations a constitutional right to enter our ports whenever they pleased, and this, too, notwithstanding we might be at war with them; or they may have passed laws denying us the privileges they grant to all other commercial nations; or circumstances not now foreseen might render it necessary for us to prohibit them. Such a clause would have injured the Eastern States, would have been eventually detrimental to ourselves, and would have in fact amounted to a declaration that we were resolved never to have a navy. To such a clause the general declared he never would have consented, and desired the gentleman to produce an instance of any independent power who did not give exclusive advantages to their own shipping. He then took notice that Chancellor Matthews had fully answered what had been alleged concerning the exorbitant freights we should be obliged to pay, and had clearly shown that no danger was to be apprehended on that subject; and that the Eastern States could soon furnish us, and all the Southern States, with a sufficient number of ships to carry off our produce. With regard to the general government imposing internal taxes upon us, he contended that it was absolutely necessary they should have such a power: requisitions had been in vain tried every year since the ratification of the old Confederation, and not a single state had [p.306] paid the quota required of her. The general government could not abuse this power, and favor one state and oppress another, as each state was to be taxed only in proportion to its representation; and as to excises, when it is considered how many more excisable articles are manufactured to the northward than there are to the southward, and the ease and convenience of raising a revenue by indirect taxation, and the necessity there is to obtain money for the payment of our debts, for our common defence, and for the general welfare, he thought every man would see the propriety, and even the necessity, of this clause. For his part, he knew of no sum that he would not sooner have consented to have paid, if he had had it, rather than have adopted Lord North's conciliatory plan, which seems, by the argument of the gentleman, to be in some respect preferable to the proposed Constitution; but in asserting this, the gentleman certainly cannot be serious. As to the payment of members of the legislature out of the federal treasury, General Pinckney contended it was right, and particularly beneficial to us, who were so distant from the seat of the federal government, as we at present paid our members not only while they were actually in Congress, but for all the time they were going there and returning home, which was an expense the Middle States felt but in a slight degree; but now that all the members are to be paid out of the public treasury, our remote situation will not be particularly expensive to us. The case of the payment of the Massachusetts judges under the royal government can by no ingenuity be made applicable to the payment of the members of the federal legislature. With regard to Mr. Lowndes's question, "What harm had paper money done?" General Pinckney answered, that he wondered that gentleman should ask such a question, as he had told the house that he had lost fifteen thousand guineas by depreciation; but he would tell the gentleman what further injuries it had done-it had corrupted the morals of the people; it had diverted them from the paths of honest industry to the ways of ruinous speculation; it had destroyed both public and private credit, and bad brought total ruin on numberless widows and orphans.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.334
[p.334] The only parts of this section that are objected to are those which relate to the emission of paper money, and its consequences, tender-laws, and the impairing the obligation of contracts.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.334
I apprehend these general reasonings will be found true with respect to paper money: That experience has shown that, in every state where it has been practised since the revolution, it always carries the gold and silver out of the country, and impoverishes it-that, while it remains, all the foreign merchants, trading in America, must suffer and lose by it; therefore, that it must ever be a discouragement to commerce-that every medium of trade should have an intrinsic value, which paper money has not; gold and silver are therefore the fittest for this medium, as they are an equivalent, which paper can never be- that debtors in the assemblies will, whenever they can, make paper money with fraudulent views-that in those states where the credit of the paper money has been best supported, the bills have never kept to their nominal value in circulation, but have constantly depreciated to a certain degree.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.334
I consider it as a granted position that, while the productions of a state are useful to other countries, and can find a ready sale at foreign markets, there can be no doubt of their always being able to command a sufficient sum in specie to answer as a medium for the purposes of carrying on this commerce; provided there is no paper money,.or other means of conducting it. This, I think, will be the case even in instances where the balance of trade is against a state; but where the balance is in favor, or where there is nearly as much exported as imported, there can be no doubt that the products will be the means of always introducing a sufficient quantity of specie.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.335
Thus circumstanced, where can be the necessity of paper money? Will you not have specie in sufficient quantities? Will you not have more money in circulation without paper money than with it?-I mean, without having only paper in such quantities as you are able to maintain the credit of, as at present. I aver you may, and appeal only to the experience of the last five or six years. Will it not be confessed that, in 1783 and 1784, we had more money than we have at present, and that the emission of your present paper banished double the amount out of circulation? Besides, if paper should become necessary, the general government still possess the power of emitting it, and Continental paper, well funded, must ever answer the purpose better than state paper.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.336
[p.336] But above all, how much will this section tend to restore your credit with foreigners-to rescue your national character from that contempt which must ever follow the most flagrant violations of public faith and private honesty! No more shall paper money, no more shall tender-laws, drive their commerce from our shores, and darken the American name in every country where it is known. No more shall our citizens conceal in their coffers those treasures which the weakness and dishonesty of our government have long hidden from the public eye. The firmness of a just and even system shall bring them into circulation, and honor and virtue shall be again known and countenanced among us. No more shall the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, become the miserable victims of unjust rulers. Your government shall now, indeed, be a government of laws. The arm of Justice shall be lifted on high; and the poor and the rich, the strong and the weak, shall be equally protected in their rights. Public as well as private confidence shall again be established; industry shall return among us; and the blessings of our government shall verify that old, but useful maxim, that with states, as well as individuals, honesty is the best policy.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.456
Mr. ALSTON. In the 10th article, 1st section, of the Constitution, it [p.457] is said, "No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make any .thing but gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debts." The interpretation which I give to it is, that the United States possess power to make any thing, besides gold and silver, a legal tender. If what I conceive to be a fair interpretation be admitted, it must follow that they have a right to make bank paper a legal tender. Much more, then, sir, have they the power of causing it to be received by themselves, in payment of taxes.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.458
The right to create a corporation is a right inherent in every sovereignty. The people of the United States cannot exercise this right. If, then, the states are restrained from creating a bank with authority to emit bills of credit, it appears to be established that the federal government does possess this right. If, however, it is still believed that the law by which this bank has been created was the result of a forced construction, yet I must contend that that construction is entitled to some weight in the decision of this question. The time and state of the public mind, when this construction was given, gives it a strong claim to consideration upon this occasion. This construction was given shortly after the government was organized, when first impressions had not been effaced by lapse of time, or distorted by party feelings or individual animosity. The parties which then existed were literally federal and anti-federal. Those who were friendly to the Federal Constitution, and those who were inimical to it, formed the only parties then known in this nation.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.486
The difficulties which existed between us and Great Britain, relative to the execution of the treaty of peace, are known to all. Upon the avowed ground of retaliation for the refusal of England to comply with the stipulation on her part, laws were passed, between the years 1783 and 1788, by the states of Virginia, South Carolina, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Georgia, delaying execution, liberating the body from imprisonment on the delivery of property, and admitting executions to be discharged in paper money. Although those laws were general in their terms, applicable as well to natives as to foreigners, the. it chief operation was upon the British creditors; and such was the leading design of their enactment. England remonstrated against them an infractions of the stipulations in the treaty, that creditors, on either side, should meet with no impediments to the recovery of the full value, in sterling money, of all debts previously contracted, and attempted to justify the glaring violations of the treaty, on her part, on that ground. An animated discussion took place between the federal government and Great Britain, and between the former and the states in question, upon the subject of the laws referred to, their character and effect. It was during this time that the Constitution was formed and ratified. It is supposed that the difficulties, thus thrown in the way of adjustment with England, through the acts of the state governments, suggested the insertion in the Constitution of the provision in question, and that it was under a belief that its chief application would be to the evil then felt, that so little notice was taken of the subject.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.498
This leads us to inquire into the origin of this government, and the source of its power. Whose agent is it? Is it the creature of the state legislatures, or the creature of the people? If the government of the United States be the agent of the state governments, then they may control it, provided they can agree in the manner of controlling it; if it be the agent of the people, then the people alone can control it, restrain it, modify, or reform it. It is observable enough, that the doctrine for which the honorable gentleman contends leads him to the necessity of maintaining, not only that this general government is the creature of the states but that it is the creature of each of the states severally; so that each may assert the power, for itself, of determining whether it acts within the limits of its authority. It is the servant of four-and-twenty masters, of different wills and different purposes, and yet bound to obey all. This absurdity (for it seems no less) arises from a misconception as to the origin of this government, and its true character. It is, sir, the people's Constitution, the people's government-made for the people, made by the people; and, answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declares that this Constitution shall be the supreme law. We must either admit [p.499] the proposition, or dispute their authority: The states are, unquestionably, sovereign, so far as their sovereignty is not affected by this supreme law. But the state legislatures, as political bodies, however sovereign, are yet not sovereign over the people. So far as the people have given power to the general government, so far the grants are unquestionably good, and the government holds of the people, and not of the state governments. We are all agents of the same supreme power, the people. The general government anti the state governments derive their authority from the same source. Neither can, in relation to the other, be called primary, though one is definite and restricted, and the other general and residuary. The national government possesses those powers which it can be shown the people have conferred on it, and no more. All the rest belongs to the state governments or to the people themselves. So far as the people have restrained state sovereignty, by the expression of their will, in the Constitution of the United States, so far, it must be admitted, state sovereignty is effectually controlled. I do not contend that it is, or ought to be, controlled further. The sentiment to which I have referred propounds that state sovereignty is only to be controlled by its own "feeling of justice;" that is to say, it is not to be controlled at all; for one who is to follow his own feelings is under no legal control. Now, however men may think this ought to be, the fact is, that the people of the United States have chosen to impose control on state sovereignties. There are those, doubtless, Who wish they had been left without restraint; but the Constitution has ordered the matter differently. To make war, for instance, is an exercise of sovereignty; but the Constitution declares that no state shall make war. To coin money is another exercise of sovereign power; but no state is at liberty to coin money. Again, the Constitution says that no sovereign state shall be so sovereign as to make a treaty. These prohibitions, it must be confessed, are a control on the state sovereignty of South Carolina, as well as of the other states, which does not arise "from her own feelings of honorable justice." Such an opinion, therefore, is in defiance of the plainest provisions of the Constitution.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.506
I must now beg to ask, sir, whence is this supposed right of the states derived?-where do they find the power to interfere with the laws of the Union? Sir, the opinion which the honorable gentleman maintains is a notion rounded in a total misapprehension, in my judgment, of the origin of this government, and of the foundation on which it stands. I hold it to be a popular government, erected by the people; those who administer it responsible to the people; and itself capable of being amended and modified, just as the people may choose it should be. It is as popular, just as truly emanating from the people, as the state governments. It is created for one purpose, the state governments for another. It has its own powers, they have theirs. There is no more authority with them to arrest the operation of a law of Congress, than with Congress to arrest the operation of their laws. We are here to administer a Constitution emanating. immediately from the people, and trusted by them to our administration. It is not the creature of the state governments. It is of no moment to the argument that certain acts of the state legislatures are necessary to fill our seats in this body. That is not one of their original state powers, a part of the sovereignty of the state. It is a duty which the people, by the Constitution itself, have imposed on the state legislatures, and which they might have left to be performed elsewhere, if they had seen fit. So they have left the choice of President with electors; but all this does not affect the proposition, that this whole government-President, Senate and House of Representatives-is a popular government. It leaves it still all its popular character. The governor of a state (in some of the states) is chosen, not directly by the people, but by those who are chosen by the people, for the purpose of performing, among other duties, that of electing a governor. Is the government of a state, on that account, not a popular government? This government, sir, is the independent offspring of the popular will. It is not the creature of state legislatures; nay, more, if the whole truth must be told, the people brought it into existence, established it, and have hitherto supported it, for the very purpose, amongst others, of imposing certain salutary restraints on state sovereignties. The states cannot now make war; they cannot contract alliances; they cannot make, each for itself, separate regulations of commerce; they cannot lay imposts; they cannot coin money. If this Constitution, sir, be the creature of state legislatures, it must be admitted that it has obtained a strange control over the volition of its creators.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.524
The power to "coin money and fix the value thereof" is expressly and exclusively vested in Congress. This grant was evidently intended to invest Congress with the power of regulating the circulating medium. "Coin" was regarded, at the period of framing the Constitution, as synonymous with "currency," as it was then generally believed that bank notes could only be maintained in circulation by being the true representative of the precious metals. The word "coin," therefore, must be regarded as a particular term, standing as the representative of a general idea. No principle of sound construction will justify a rigid adherence to the letter, in opposition to the plain intention of the clause. If, for example, the gold bars of Ricardo should be substituted for our present coins, by the general consent of the commercial world, could it be maintained that Congress would not have the power to make such money, and fix its value, because it is not "coined "? This would be sacrificing sense to sound, and substance to mere form. This clause of the Constitution is analogous to that which gives Congress the power "to establish post-roads." Giving to the word "establish" its restricted interpretation, as being equivalent to "fix" or "prescribe," can it be doubted that Congress has the power to establish a canal, or a river, as a post-route, as well as a road? Roads were the ordinary channels of conveyance, and the term was, therefore, used as synonymous with ,, routes," whatever might be the channel of transportation; and, in like manner, "coin" being the ordinary and most known form of a circulating medium, that term was used as synonymous with currency.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.524
An argument in favor of the view just taken may be fairly deduced from the fact, that the states are expressly prohibited from "coining money, or emitting bills of credit," and from "making any thing but gold and silver a lawful tender in payment of debts." This strongly confirms the idea, that the subject of regulating the circulating medium, whether consisting of coin or paper, was, at the same time that it was taken from the control of the states, vested in the only depository m which it could be placed, consistently with the obvious design of having a common measure of value throughout the Union.[p.525]
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.540
2. Resolved, That the Constitution of the United States having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the laws of nations, and no other crimes wait-ever; and it being true, as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared "that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, Or to the people,"-therefore, also, the same act of Congress, passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, and entitled "An Act in Addition to the Act entitled 'An Act for the Punishment of certain Crimes against the United States;'" as also act passed by them on the 27th day of June, 1798, entitled "An Act to punish Frauds committed on the Bank of the United States, (and all other their acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes other .than those enumerated in the Constitution,) are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish, such other crimes is reserved, and of right appertains, solely and exclusively, to the respective states, each within its own territory.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.563
Never, perhaps, was so broad a construction applied to a text so clearly unsusceptible of it. If any color for the inference could be found, it must be in the impossibility of finding any other cases, in law and equity, within the provisions of the Constitution, to satisfy the expression; and rather than resort to a construction affecting so essentially the whole character of the government, it would perhaps be more rational to consider the expression as a mere pleonasm or inadvertence. But it is not necessary to decide on such a dilemma. The expression is fully satisfied, and its accuracy justified, by two descriptions of cases, to which the judicial authority is extended, and neither of which implies that the common law is the law of the United States. One of these descriptions comprehends the [p.564] cases growing out of the restrictions on the legislative power of the states. For example, it is provided that "no state shall emit bills of credit," or "make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender for the payment of debts." Should this prohibition be violated, and a suit between citizens of the same state be the consequence, this would be a case arising under the Constitution before the judicial power of the United States. A second description comprehends suits between citizens and foreigners, of citizens of different states, to be decided according to the state or foreign laws, but submitted by the Constitution to the judicial power of the United States; the judicial power being, in several instances, extended beyond the legislative power of the United States.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.600
That the former power, if not particularly expressed, would have been included in the latter as one of the objects of a general power to regulate trade, is not necessarily impugned by its being so expressed. Examples of this sort cannot sometimes be easily avoided, and are to be seen elsewhere in the Constitution. Thus the power "to define and punish offences against the law of nations" includes the power, afterwards particularly expressed, "to make rules concerning captures, &c., from offending neutrals." So also a power "to coin money" would doubtless include that of "regulating its value," had not the latter power been expressly inserted. The term taxes, if standing alone, would certainly have included duties, imposts, and excises. In another clause, it is said, "no tax or duties shall he laid on exports," &c. Here the two terms are used as synonymous. And in another clause, where it is said, "No state shall lay any impost, or duties," &c., the terms imposts and duties are synonymous. Pleonasms, tautologies, and the promiscuous use of terms and phrases, differing in their shades of meaning, (always to be expounded with reference to the context, and under the control of the general character and manifest scope of the instrument in which they are found,) are to be ascribed, sometimes to the purpose of greater caution, sometimes to the imperfections of language, and sometimes to the imperfection of man himself. In this view of the subject, it was quite natural, however certainly the general power to regulate trade might include a power to impose duties on it, not to omit it in a clause enumerating the several modes of revenue authorized by the Constitution. In few cases could the "ex majori cautela" occur with more claim to respect.
OF THE PENNSYLVANIA LEGISLATURE,
ON THE SUBJECT OF "BILLS OF CREDIT;"
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.608
The evil which produced the prohibitory clause in the Constitution of the United States, was the practice of the states in making bills of credit, and, in some instances, appraised property, a "legal tender. If the notes of state banks, therefore, whether chartered or unchartered, be made a legal tender, they are prohibited; if not made a legal tender, they do not fall within the prohibitory clause. The number of the Federalist referred to was written with that view of the subject; and this, with probably other contemporary expositions, and the uninterrupted practice of the states in creating and permitting banks, without making their notes a legal tender, would seem to be a bar to the question, if it were not inexpedient now to agitate it.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.612
The variations and vicissitudes in the modification of the clause in which the terms "common defence and general welfare" appear, are remarkable, and to be no otherwise explained than by differences of opinion concerning the necessity or the form of a constitutional provision for the debts of the revolution; some of the members apprehending improper claims for losses, by depreciated bills of credit; others, an evasion of proper claims, if not positively brought within the authorized functions of the new government; and others, again, considering the past debts of the United States as sufficiently secured by the principle that no change in the government could change the obligations of the nation. Besides the indications in the Journal, the history of the period unctions this explanation.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 4, p.613
If the practice of the revolutionary Congress be pleaded in opposition to this view of the case, the plea is met by the notoriety, that, on several accounts, the practice of that body is not the expositor of the "Articles of Confederation?" These Articles were not in force till they were finally ratified by Maryland in 1781. Prior to that event, the power of Congress was measured by the exigencies of the war, and derived its sanction from the acquiescence of the states. After that event, habit, and a continued expediency, amounting often to a real or apparent necessity, prolonged the exercise of an undefined authority, which was the more readily overlooked, as the members of the body held their seats during pleasure; as its acts, particularly after the failure of the bills of credit, depended, for their efficacy, on the will of the state; and as its general impotency became manifest. Examples of departure from the prescribed rule are too well known to require proof. The case of the old Bank of North America might be cited as a memorable one. the incorporating ordinance grew out of the inferred necessity of such all institution to carry on the war, by aiding the finances, which were starving under the neglect or inability of the states to furnish the assessed quotas. Congress was at the time so much aware of the deficient authority, that they recommended it to the state legislatures to pass laws giving due effect to the ordinance, which was done by Pennsylvania and several other states.
Letter of Mr. Jay, with a copy of the intercepted letter from Marbois laid before Congress-Remarks thereon-Letter of Mr. Pendleton to Mr. Madison, stating the repeal, by the legislature of Virginia, of her law for the impost-The departure of the deputation to Rhode Island suspended until the further order of Congress-Motion by Mr. Rutledge against salvage for recaptures on land-Passed by compromise as reported by the committee-Report of the grand committee with respect to the old paper money.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.55
As to the first opinion, he observed that, by the Articles of Confederation, Congress had clearly and expressly the right to fix the quantum of revenue necessary for the public exigencies, and to require the same from the states respectively, in proportion to the value of the land; that the requisitions thus made were a law to the states, as much as the acts of the latter for complying with them were a law to their individual members; that the Federal Constitution was as sacred and obligatory as the internal constitutions of the several states; and that nothing could justify the [p.56] states in disobeying acts warranted by it, but some previous abuse and infraction on the part of Congress; that as a proof that the power of fixing the quantum, and making requisitions of money, was considered as a legislative power over the purse, he would appeal to the proposition, made by the British minister, of giving this power to the British Parliament, and leaving to the American assemblies the privilege of complying in their own mode, and to the reasonings of Congress and the several states on that proposition. He observed, further, that by the Articles of Confederation was delegated to Congress a right to borrow money indefinitely, and emit bills of credit, which was a species of borrowing, for repayment and redemption of which the faith of the states was pledged, and their legislatures constitutionally bound. He asked whether these powers were reconcilable with the idea that Congress was a body merely executive. He asked what would be thought in Great Britain, from whose constitution our political reasonings were so much drawn, of an attempt to prove that a power of making requisitions of money on the Parliament, and of borrowing money, for discharge of which the Parliament should be bound, might be annexed to the crown without changing its quality of an executive branch, and that the leaving to the Parliament the mode only of complying with the requisitions of the crown would be leaving to it its supreme and exclusive power of legislation.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.108
[p.108] Let it have a negative, in all cases whatsoever, on the legislative acts of the states, as the king of Great Britain heretofore had. This I conceive to be essential, and the least possible abridgment of the state sovereignties. Without such a defensive power, every positive power that can be given on paper will be unavailing. It will also give internal stability to the states. There has been no moment, since the peace, at which the federal assent would have been given to paper money, &c. &c.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.126
2. In speaking of the defects of the Confederation, he professed a high respect for its authors, and considered them as having done all that patriots could do, in the then infancy of the science of constitutions and of confederacies; when the inefficiency of requisitions was unknown-no commercial discord had arisen among any states-no rebellion had appeared, as in Massachusetts-foreign debts had not become urgent-the havoc of paper money had not been foreseen-treaties had not been [p.127] violated; and perhaps nothing better could be obtained, from the jealousy of the states with regard to their sovereignty.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.130
"To borrow money, and emit bills of credit;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.130
"To coin money, and regulate the value of all coins, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.130
"To declare the law and punishment of piracies and felonies at sea, and of counterfeiting coin, and of all offences against the laws of nations;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.131
"ART. XI.-No state shall grant letters of marque and reprisal, or enter into treaty, or alliance, or confederations; nor grant any title of nobility; nor, without the consent of the legislature of the United States, lay any impost on imports; nor keep troops or ships of war in time of peace; nor enter into compacts with other states or foreign powers; nor emit bills of credit; nor make any thing but gold, silver, or copper, a tender in payment of debts; nor engage in war, except for self-defence when actually invaded, or the danger of invasion be so great as not to admit of a delay until the government of the United States can be informed thereof. And, to [p.132] render these prohibitions effectual, the legislature of the United States shall have the power to revise the laws of the several states that may be supposed to infringe the powers exclusively delegated by this Constitution to Congress, and to negative and annul such as do.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.161
Col. MASON. Under the existing Confederacy, Congress represent the states, and not the people of the states; their acts operate on the states, not on the individuals. The case will be changed in the new plan of government. The people will be represented; they ought therefore to choose the representatives. The requisites in actual representation are, that the representatives should sympathize with their constituents; should think as they think, and feel as they feel; and that for these purposes they should be residents among them. Much, he said, had been alleged against democratic elections. He admitted that much might be said; but it was to be considered that no government was free from imperfections and evils; and that improper elections, in many instances, were inseparable from republican governments. But compare these with the advantage of this form, in favor of the rights of the people-in favor of human nature. He was persuaded there was a better chance for proper elections by the people, if divided into large districts, than by the state legislatures, Paper money had been issued by the latter, when the former were against it. Was it to be supposed that the state legislatures, then, would not send to the national legislature patrons of such projects, if the choice depended on them?
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.163
Gen. PINCKNEY wished to have a good national government, and, at the same time, to leave a considerable share of power in the states. An election of either branch by the people, scattered as they are in many states, particularly in South Carolina, was totally impracticable. He differed from gentlemen who thought that a choice [p.164] by the people would be a better guard against bad measures than by the legislatures. A majority of the people in South Carolina were notoriously for paper money as a legal tender; the legislature had refused to make it a legal tender. The reason was, that the latter had some sense of character, and were restrained by that consideration. The state legislatures, also, he said, Would be more jealous, and more ready to thwart the national government, if excluded from a participation in it. The idea of abolishing these legislatures would never go down.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.169
Mr. MADISON could as little comprehend in what manner family weight, as desired by Mr. Dickinson, would be more certainly conveyed into the Senate through elections by the state legislatures than in some other modes. The true question was, in what mode the best choice would be made. If an election by the people, or through any other channel than the state legislatures, promised as uncorrupt and impartial a preference of merit, there could surely be no necessity for an appointment by those legislatures. Nor was it apparent that a more useful check would be derived through that channel than from the people through some other. The great evils complained of were, that the state legislatures ran into schemes of paper money, &c., whenever solicited by the people, and sometimes without even the sanction of the people. Their influence, then, instead of checking a like propensity in the national legislature, may be expected to promote it. Nothing can be more contradictory than to say that the national legislature, without a proper check, will follow the example of the state legislatures, and, in the same breath that the state legislatures are the only proper check.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.169
Mr. GERRY insisted, that the commercial and moneyed interest would be more secure in the hands of the state legislatures than of the people at large. The former have more sense of character, and will be restrained by that from injustice. The people are for paper money, when the legislatures are against it. In Massachusetts, the county conventions had declared a wish for a depreciating paper that would sink itself. Besides, in some states there are two branches in the legislature, one of which is somewhat aristocratic. There would therefore, be so far a better chance of refinement in the choice. There seemed, he thought, to be three powerful objections against elections by districts. First, it is impracticable; the people cannot be brought to one place for the purpose; and, whether brought to the same place or not, numberless frauds would be unavoidable. Secondly, small [p.170] states, forming part of the same district with a large one, or a large part of a large one, would have no chance of gaining an appointment for its citizens of merit. Thirdly, a new source of discord would be opened between different parts of the same district.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.171
Mr. GERRY could not see the extent of such a power, and was against every power that was not necessary. He thought a remonstrance against unreasonable acts of the states would restrain them. If it should not, force might be resorted to. He had no objection to authorize a negative to paper money, and similar measures. When [p.172] the Confederation was depending before Congress, Massachusetts was then for inserting the power of emitting paper money among the exclusive powers of Congress. He observed, that the proposed negative would extend to the regulations of the militia-a matter on which the existence of the state might depend. The national legislature, with such a power, may enslave the states. Such an idea as this will never be acceded to. It has never been suggested or conceived among the people. No speculative projector-and there are enough of that character among us, in politics as well as in other things-has, in any pamphlet or newspaper, thrown out the idea. The states, too, have different interests, and are ignorant of each other's interests. The negative, therefore, will be abused. New states, too, having separate views from the old states, will never come into the Union. They may even be under some foreign influence. Are they, in such case, to participate in the negative on the will of the other states?
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.202
This view of the subject almost led him to despair that a republican government could be established over so great an extent. He was sensible, at the same time, that it would be unwise to propose one of any other form. In his private opinion, he had no scruple in declaring, supported as he was by the opinion of so many of the wise and good, that the British government was the best in the world; and that he doubted much whether any thing short of it would do in America. He hoped gentlemen of different opinions would bear with him in this, and begged them to recollect the change of opinion on this subject which had taken place, and was still going on. It was once thought, that the power of Congress was amply sufficient to secure the end of their institution. The error was now seen by every one. The members most tenacious of republicanism, he observed, were as loud as any in declaiming against the vices of democracy. This progress of the public mind led him to anticipate the time, when others as well as himself would join in the praise bestowed by Mr Neckar on the British constitution-namely that it is the only government in the world "which unites public strength with individual security." In every community where industry is encouraged, there [p.203] will be a division of it into the few and the many. Hence, separate interests will arise. There will be debtors and creditors, &c. Give all power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all power to the few, they will oppress the many. Both, therefore, ought to have the power, that each may defend itself against the other. To the want of this check, we owe our paper money, instalment laws, &c. To the proper adjustment of it, the British owe the excellence of their constitution. Their House of Lords is a most noble institution. Having nothing to hope for by a change, and a sufficient interest, by means of their property, in being faithful to the national interest, they form a permanent barrier against every pernicious innovation, whether attempted on the part of the crown or of the commons. No temporary Senate will have firmness enough to answer the purpose. The senate of Maryland, which seems to be so much appealed to, has not yet been sufficiently tried. Had the people been unanimous and eager in the late appeal to them on the subject of a paper emission, they would have yielded to the torrent. Their acquiescing in such an appeal is a proof of it. Gentlemen differ in their opinions concerning the necessary checks, from the different estimates they form of the human passions. They suppose seven years a sufficient period to give the Senate an adequate firmness, from not duly considering the amazing violence and turbulence of the democratic spirit. When a great object of government is pursued, which seizes the popular passions, they spread like wild-fire and become irresistible. He appealed to the gentlemen from the New England States, whether experience had not there verified the remark. As to the executive, it seemed to be admitted that no good one could be established on republican principles. Was not this giving up the merits of the question; for can there be a good government without a good executive? The English model was the only good one on this subject. The hereditary interest of the king was so interwoven with that of the nation, and his personal emolument so great, that he was placed above the danger of being corrupted from abroad; and at the same time was both sufficiently independent and sufficiently controlled, to answer the purpose of the institution at home. One of the weak sides of republics was their being liable to foreign influence and corruption. Men of little character, acquiring great power, become easily the tools of intermeddling neighbors. Sweden was a striking instance. The French and English had each their parties during the late revolution, which was effected by the predominant influence of the former. What is the inference from all these observations? That we ought to go as far, in order to attain stability and permanency, as republican principles will admit. Let one branch of the legislature hold their places for life, or at least during good behavior. Let the executive, also, be for life. He appealed to the feelings of the members present, whether a term of seven years would induce the sacrifices of private affairs which an acceptance of public trust would require, so as to insure the services of the best citizens. On this plan, we should have in the Senate [p.204] a permanent will, a weighty interest, which would answer essential purposes. But is this a republican government, it will be asked. Yes, if all the magistrates are appointed and vacancies are filled by the people, or a process of election originating with the people. He was sensible that an executive, constituted as he proposed, would have in fact but little of the power and independence that might be necessary. On the other plan, of appointing him for seven years, he thought the executive ought to have but little power. He would be ambitious, with the means of making creatures; and as the object of his ambition would be to prolong his power, it is probable that, in case of war, he would avail himself of the emergency, to evade or refuse a degradation from his place. An executive for life has not this motive for forgetting his fidelity, and will therefore be a safer depository of power. It will be objected, probably, that such an executive will be an elective monarch, and will give birth to the tumults which characterize that form of government. He would reply, that monarch is an indefinite term. It marks not either the degree or duration of power. If this executive magistrate would be a monarch for life, the other proposed by the report from the Committee of the Whole would be a monarch for seven years. The circumstance of being elective was also applicable to both. It had been observed, by judicious writers, that elective monarchies would be the best if they could be guarded against the tumults excited by the ambition and intrigues of competitors. He was not sure that tumults were an inseparable evil. He thought this character of elective monarchies had been taken rather from particular cases than from general principles. The election of Roman emperors was made by the army. In Poland, the election is made by great rival princes, with independent power, and ample means of raising commotions. In the German empire, the appointment is made by the electors and princes, who have equal motives and means for exciting cabals and parties. Might not such a mode of election be devised, among ourselves, as will defend the community against these effects in any dangerous degree? Having made these observations, he would read to the committee a sketch of a plan which he should prefer to either of those under consideration. He was aware that it went beyond the ideas of most members. But will such a plan be adopted out of doors? In return he would ask, will the people adopt the other plan? At present, they will adopt neither. But he sees the Union dissolving, or already dissolved-he sees evils operating in the states which must soon cure the people of their fondness for democracies-he sees that a great progress has been already made, and is still going on, in the public mind. He thinks, therefore, that the people will in time be unshackled from their prejudices; and whenever that happens, they will themselves not be satisfied at stopping where the plan of Mr. Randolph would place them, but be ready to go as far at least as he proposes. He did not mean to offer the paper he had sketched as a proposition to that committee. It was meant only to give a more correct view of his ideas, and to suggest the [p.205] amendments which he should probably propose to the plan of Mr. Randolph, in the proper stages of its future discussion. He reads his sketch in the words following: to wit,
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.208
3. Will it prevent trespasses of the states on each other? Of these, enough has been already seen. He instanced acts of Virginia and Maryland, which gave a preference to their own citizens in cases where the citizens of other states are entitled to equality of privileges by the Articles of Confederation. He considered the emissions of paper money, and other kindred measures, as also aggressions. The states, relatively to one another, being each of them either debtor or creditor, the creditor states mast suffer unjustly [p.209] from every emission by the debtor states. We have seen retaliating acts on the subject, which threatened danger, not to the harmony only, but the tranquillity of the Union. The plan of Mr. Patterson, not giving even a negative on the acts of the states, left them as much at liberty as ever to execute their unrighteous projects against each other.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.250
Mr. MADISON said, he was much disposed to concur in any expedient, not inconsistent with fundamental principles, that could remove the difficulty concerning the rule of representation. But he could neither be convinced that the rule contended for was just, nor that it was necessary for the safety of the small states against the large states. That it was not just, had been conceded by Mr. Brearley and Mr. Patterson themselves. The expedient proposed by them was a new partition of the territory of the United States. The fallacy of the reasoning drawn from the equality of sovereign states, in the formation of compacts, lay in confounding mere treaties, in which were specified certain duties to which the parties were to be bound, and certain rules by which their subjects were to be reciprocally governed in their intercourse, with a compact by which an authority was created paramount to the parties, and making laws for the government of them. If France, England, and Spain, were to enter into a treaty for the regulation of commerce, &c., with the Prince of Monacho, and four or five other of the smallest sovereigns of Europe, they would not hesitate to treat as equals, and to make the regulations perfectly reciprocal. Would the case be the same, if a council were to be formed of deputies from each, with authority and discretion to raise money, levy troops, determine the value of coin, &c.? Would thirty or forty millions of people submit their fortunes into the hands of a few thousands? If they did, it would only prove that they expected more from the terror of their superior force, than they feared from the selfishness of their feeble associates. Why are counties of the same states represented in proportion to [p.251] their numbers? Is it because the representatives are chosen by the people themselves? So will be the representatives in the national legislature. Is it because the larger have more at stake than the smaller? The case will be the same with the larger and smaller states. Is it because the laws are to operate immediately on their persons and properties? The same is the case, in some degree, as the Articles of Confederation stand; the same will be the case, in a far greater degree, under the plan proposed to be substituted. In the cases of captures, of piracies, and of offences in a federal army, the property and persons of individuals depend on the laws of Congress. By the plan proposed, a complete power of taxation-the highest prerogative of supremacy-is proposed to be vested in the national government. Many other powers are added, which assimilate it to the government of individual states. The negative proposed on the state laws will make it an essential branch of the state legislatures, and of course will require that it should be exercised by a body established on like principles with the branches of those legislatures. That it is not necessary to secure the small states against the large ones, he conceived to be equally obvious. Was a combination of the large ones dreaded? This must arise either from some interest common to Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, and distingnishing them from the other states; or from the mere circumstance of similarity of size. Did any such common interest exist? In point of situation, they could not have been more effectually separated from each other by the most jealous citizen of the most jealous states. In point of manners, religion, and the other circumstances which sometimes beget affection between different communities, they were not more assimilated than the other states. In point of the staple productions, they were as dissimilar as any three other states in the Union. The staple of Massachusetts was fish, of Pennsylvania flour, of Virginia tobacco. Was a combination to be apprehended from the mere circumstance of equality of size? Experience suggested no such danger. The Journals of Congress did not present any peculiar association of these states in the votes recorded. It had never been seen that different counties in the same state, conformable in extent, but disagreeing in other circumstances, betrayed a propensity to such combinations. Experience rather taught a contrary lesson. Among individuals of superior eminence and weight in society, rivalships were much more frequent than coalitions. Among independent nations, preëminent over their neighbors, the same remark was verified. Carthage and Rome tore one another to pieces, instead of uniting their forces to devour the weaker nations of the earth. The houses of Austria and France were hostile as long as they remained the greatest powers of Europe. England and France have succeeded to the preëminence and to the enmity. To this principle we owe perhaps our liberty. A coalition between those powers would have been fatal to us. Among the principal members of ancient and modern confederacies we find the same effect from [p.252] the same cause. The contentions, not the coalitions, of Sparta, Athens, and Thebes, proved fatal to the smaller members of the Amphictyonic confederacy. The contentions, not the combinations, of Russia and Austria, have distracted and oppressed the German Empire. Were the large states formidable, singly, to their smaller neighbors? On this supposition, the latter ought to wish for such a general government as will operate with equal energy on the former as on themselves. The more lax the band, the more liberty the larger will have to avail themselves of their superior force. Here, again, experience was an instructive monitor. What is the situation of the weak, compared with the strong, in those stages of civilization in which the violence of individuals is least controlled by an efficient government? The heroic period of ancient Greece, the feudal licentiousness of the middle ages of Europe, the existing condition of the American savages, answer this question. What is the situation of the minor sovereigns in the great society of independent nations, in which the more powerful are under no control but the nominal authority of the law of nations? Is not the danger to the former exactly in proportion to their weakness? But there are cases still more in point. What was the condition of the weaker members of the Amphictyonic confederacy? Plutarch (see Life of Themistocles) will inform us, that it happened but too often, that the strongest cities corrupted and awed the weaker, and that judgment went in favor of the more powerful party. What is the condition of the lesser states in the German confederacy? We all know that they are exceedingly trampled upon, and that they owe their safety, as far as they enjoy it, partly to their enlisting themselves under the rival banners of the preëminent members, partly to alliances with neighboring princes, which the constitution of the empire does not prohibit. What is the state of things in the lax system of the Dutch confederacy? Holland contains about half the people, supplies about half the money, and by her influence silently and indirectly governs the whole republic. In a word, the two extremes before us are, a perfect separation, and a perfect incorporation of the thirteen states. In the first case, they would be independent nations, subject to no law but the law of nations. In the last, they would be mere counties of one entire republic, subject to one common law. In the first case, the smaller states would have every thing to fear from the larger. In the last, they would have nothing to fear. The true policy of the small states, therefore, lies in promoting those principles, and that form of government, which will most approximate the states to the condition of counties. Another consideration may be added. If the general government be feeble, the larger states, distrusting its continuance, and foreseeing that their importance and security may depend on their own size and strength, will never submit to a partition. Give to the general government sufficient energy and permanency, and you remove the objection. Gradual partitions of the large, and junctions of the small states, will be facilitated, and [p.253] time may effect that equalization which is wished for by the small states now, but can never be accomplished at once.148
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.320
Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS opposed it. The internal police, as it would be called and understood by the states, ought to be infringed in many cases, as in the case of paper money, and other tricks by which citizens of other states may be affected.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.334
Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. It is necessary to take into one view all that relates to the establishment of the executive, on the due formation of which must depend the efficacy and utility of the union among the present and future states. It has been a maxim in political science, that republican government is not adapted to a large extent of country, because the energy of the executive magistracy cannot reach the extreme parts of it. Our country is an extensive one. We must either, then, renounce the blessings of the union, or provide an executive with sufficient vigor to pervade every part of it. This subject was of so much importance that he hoped to be indulged in an extensive view of it. One great object of the executive is, to control the legislature. The legislature will continually seek to aggrandize and perpetuate themselves, and will seize those critical moments produced by war, invasion, or convulsion, for that purpose. It is necessary, then, that the executive magistrate should be the guardian of the people, even of the lower classes, against legislative tyranny; against the great and the wealthy, who, in the course of things, will necessarily compose the legislative body. Wealth tends to corrupt the mind; to nourish its love of power; and to stimulate it to oppression. History proves this to be the spirit of the opulent. The check provided in the second branch was not meant as a check on legislative usurpations of power, but on the abuse of lawful powers, on the propensity of the first branch to legislate too much, to run into projects of paper money, and similar expedients. It is no check on legislative tyranny. On the contrary, it may favor it, and, if the first branch can be seduced, may find the means of success. The executive, therefore, ought to be so constituted as to be the great protector of the mass of the people. It is the duty of the executive to appoint the officers, and to command the forces, of the republic-to appoint, first, ministerial officers for the administration of public affairs; secondly, officers for the dispensation of justice. Who will be the best judges whether these appointments be well made? The people at large, who will know, will see, will feel, the effects of them. Again, who can judge so well of the discharge of military duties, for the protection and security of the people, as the people themselves, who are to be protected and secured? He finds, too, that the executive is not to be reëligible. What effect will this have? In the first place, it will destroy the great incitement to merit, public esteem, by taking away the hope of being rewarded with a reappointment. It may give a dangerous turn to one of the strongest passions in the human breast. The love of fame is the great spring to noble and illustrious actions. Shut the civil road to glory, and he may be compelled to seek it by the sword. In the second place, it will tempt him to make the most of the short space of time allotted him, to [p.335] accumulate wealth and provide for his friends. In the third place, it will produce violations of the very Constitution it is meant to secure. In moments of pressing danger, the tried abilities and established character of a favorite magistrate will prevail over respect for the forms of the Constitution. The executive is also to be impeachable. This is a dangerous part of the plan. It will hold him in such dependence, that he will be no check on the legislature, will not be a firm guardian of the people and of the public interest. He will be the tool of a faction, of some leading demagogue in the legislature. These, then, are the faults of the executive establishment, as now proposed. Can no better establishment be devised? If he is to be the guardian of the people, let him be appointed by the people. If he is to be a check on the legislature, let him not be impeachable. Let him be of short duration, that he may with propriety be reëligible. It has been said that the candidates for this office will not be known to the people. If they be known to the legislature, they must have such a notoriety and eminence of character, that they cannot possibly be unknown to the people at large. It cannot be possible that a man shall have sufficiently distinguished himself to merit this high trust, without having his character proclaimed by fame throughout the empire. As to the danger from an unimpeachable magistrate, he could not regard it as formidable. There must be certain great officers of state, a minister of finance, of war, of foreign affairs, &c. These, he presumes, will exercise their functions in subordination to the executive, and will be amenable, by impeachment, to the public justice. Without these ministers, the executive can do nothing of consequence. He suggested a biennial election of the executive, at the time of electing the first branch; and the executive to hold over, so as to prevent any interregnum in the administration. An election by the people at large, throughout so great an extent of country, could not be influenced by those little combinations and those momentary lies, which often decide popular elections within a narrow sphere. It will probably be objected, that the election will be influenced by the members of the legislature, particularly of the first branch; and that it will be nearly the same thing with an election by the legislature itself. It could not be denied that such an influence would exist. But it might be answered, that, as the legislature or the candidates for it would be divided, the enmity of one part would counteract the friendship of another; that if the administration of the executive were good, it would be unpopular to oppose his reflection; if bad, it ought to be opposed, and a reappointment prevented; and, lastly, that, in every view, this indirect dependence on the favor of the legislature could not be so mischievous as a direct dependence for his appointment. He saw no alternative for making the executive independent of the legislature, but either to give him his office for life, or make him eligible by the people. Again, it might be objected, that two years would be too short a duration. But he believes that as long as he should behave himself well he would be continued in [p.336] his place. The extent of the country would secure his reëlection against the factions and discontents of particular states. It deserved consideration, also, that such an ingredient in the plan would render it extremely palatable to the people. These were the general ideas which occurred to him on the subject, and which led him to wish and move that the whole constitution of the executive might undergo reconsideration.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.345
Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS. Some check being necessary on the legislature, the question is, in what hands it should be lodged. [p.346] On one side, it was contended, that the executive alone ought to exercise it. He did not think that an executive appointed for six years, and impeachable whilst in office, would be a very effectual check. On the other side, it was urged, that he ought to he reëinforced by the judiciary department. Against this it was objected, that expositors of laws ought to have no hand in making them, and arguments in favor of this had been drawn from England. What weight was due to them might be easily determined by an attention to facts. The truth was, that the judges in England had a great share in the legislation. They are consulted in difficult and doubtful cases. They may be, and some of them are, members of the legislature. They are, or may be, members of the privy council, and can there advise the executive, as they will do with us if the motion succeeds. The influence the English judges may have, in the latter capacity, in strengthening the executive check, cannot be ascertained, as the king by his influence, in a manner dictates the laws. There is one difference in the two cases, however, which disconcerts all reasoning from the British to our proposed Constitution. The British executive has so great an interest in his prerogatives, and such power for means of defending them, that he will never yield any part of them. The interest of our executive is so inconsiderable and so transitory, and his means of defending it so feeble, that there is the justest ground to fear his want of firmness in resisting encroachments. He was extremely apprehensive that the auxiliary firmness and weight of the judiciary would not supply the deficiency. He concurred in thinking the public liberty in greater danger from legislative usurpations than from any other source. It had been said, that the legislature ought to be relied on, as the proper guardians of liberty. The answer was short and conclusive. Either bad laws will be pushed or not. On the latter supposition, no check will be wanted; on the former, a strong check will be necessary. And this is the proper supposition Emissions of paper money, largesses to the people, a remission of debts, and similar measures, will at some times be popular, and will be pushed for that reason. At other times, such measures will coincide with the interests of the legislature themselves, and that will be a reason not less cogent fur pushing them. It may be thought that the people will not be deluded and misled in the latter case; but experience teaches another lesson. The press is indeed a great means of diminishing the evil; yet it is found to be unable to prevent it altogether.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.378
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states;
To establish an uniform rule of naturalization throughout the United States;
To coin money;
To regulate the value of foreign coin;
To fix the standard of weights and measures;
To establish post-offices;
To borrow money, and emit bills, on the credit of the United States;
To constitute tribunals inferior to the supreme court;
To make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To declare the law and punishment of piracies and felonies committed on the [p.379] high seas, and the punishment of counterfeiting the coin of the United States and of offences against the law of nations;
To subdue a rebellion in any state, on the application of its legislature;
To make war;
To raise armies;
To build and equip fleets;
To call forth the aid of the militia, in order to execute the laws of the Union, enforce treaties, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions;
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.381
ART. XII.-No state shall coin money; nor grant letters or marque and reprisal nor enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; nor grant any title of nobility.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.381
ART. XIII.-No state, without the consent of the legislature of the United States, shall emit bills of credit, or make any thing but specie a tender in payment of debts; nor lay imposts or duties on imports; nor keep troops or ships of war in time of peace; nor enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with any foreign power; nor engage in any war, unless it shall be actually invaded by enemies, or the danger of invasion be so imminent as not to admit of a delay until the legislature of the United States can be consulted.
Article seventh, relative to the powers of the legislature-Motion to exclude exports from duty-Postponed-Motion to authorize the establishment of post roads-Agreed to-Motion to forbid the emission of bills of credit-Agreed to.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.434
The several clauses-for coining money-for regulating foreign coin-for fixing the standard of weights and measures-were agreed to, nem. con.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.434
Mr. MASON had doubts on the subject. Congress, he thought, would not have the power, unless it were expressed. Though he had a mortal hatred to paper money, yet, as he could not foresee all emergencies, he was unwilling to tie the hands of the legislature. He observed that the late war could not have been carried on, had such a prohibition existed.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.435
Mr. MERCER was a friend to paper money, though, in the present state and temper of America, he should neither propose nor approve of such a measure. He was consequently opposed to a prohibition of it altogether. It will stamp suspicion on the government, to deny it a discretion on this point. It was impolitic, also, to excite the opposition of all those who were friends to paper money. The people of property would be sure to be on the side of the plan, and it was impolitic to purchase their further attachment with the loss of the opposite class of citizens.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.435
Mr. ELLSWORTH thought this a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money. The mischiefs of the various experiments which had been made were now fresh in the public mind, and had excited the disgust of all the respectable part of America. By withholding the power from the new government, more friends of influence would be gained to it than by almost any thing else. Paper money can in no case be necessary. Give the government credit, and other resources will offer. The power may do harm, never good.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.435
Mr. RANDOLPH, notwithstanding his antipathy to paper money, could not agree to strike out the words, as he could not foresee all the occasions that might arise.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.435
Mr. WILSON. It will have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States, to remove the possibility of paper money. This expedient can never succeed whilst its mischiefs are remembered; and, as long as it can be resorted to, it will be a bar to other resources.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.437
"To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, counter-letting the securities and current coin of the United States, and offences against the laws of nations,"-
Article twelfth, relative to the prohibitions on the power of the states-Motions to prohibit them absolutely from emitting bills of credit, legalizing any tender except gold or silver, or passing attainders or retrospective laws, or laying duties on imports-Agreed to-Motion to forbid them to lay embargoes-Disagreed to.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.484
Mr. WILSON and Mr. SHERMAN moved to insert, after the words, "coin money," the words, "nor emit bills of credit, nor make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts;" making these prohibitions absolute, instead of making the measures allowable, as in the 13th article, with the consent of the legislature of the United States.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.484
Mr. GORHAM thought the purpose would be as well secured by the provision of article 13, which makes the consent of the general. "The vote on this section, as stated in the printed Journal, is not unanimous the statement here is probably the right one. [p.485] Legislature necessary; and that, in that mode, no opposition would be excited; whereas, an absolute prohibition of paper money would rouse the most desperate opposition from its partizans.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.485
Mr. SHERMAN thought this a favorable crisis for crushing paper money. If the consent of the legislature could authorize emissions of it, the friends of paper money would make every exertion to get into the legislature in order to license it.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.485
The question being divided,-on the first part, "nor emit bills of credit"-
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.485
Mr. SHERMAN. Why then prohibit bills of credit?
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.546
"No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility."
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.560
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures:
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.560
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States:
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.561
SECT. 10. No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.572
Dear Sir,-Another mail has arrived from Boston without terminating the conflict between our hopes and fears. I have a letter from Mr. King, of the 27th, which, after dilating somewhat on the ideas in his former letters, concludes with the following paragraph: "We have avoided every question which would have shown the division of the House. Of consequence, we are not positive of the numbers on each side. By the last calculation we made on our side, we were doubtful whether we exceeded them, or they us, in numbers. They, however, say that they have a majority of eight or twelve against us. We by no means despair." Another letter of the same date, from another member, gives the following picture: "Never was there an assembly in this state in possession of greater ability and information than the present convention; yet I am in doubt whether they will approve the Constitution. There are, unhappily, three parties opposed to it-first, all men who are in favor of paper money and tender laws,-these are, more or less, in every part of the state; secondly, all the late insurgents and their abettors,-in the three great western countries they are very numerous; we have, in the convention, eighteen or twenty who were actually in Shay's army; thirdly, a great majority of the members from the Province of Maine. Many of them and their constituents are only squatters on other people's land, and they are afraid of being brought to account; they also think, though erroneously, that their favorite plan, of being a separate state, will be defeated. Add to these the honest doubting people, and they make a powerful host. The leaders of this party are-Mr. Widgery, Mr. Thomson, and Mr. Nasson, from the Province of Maine; Dr. Taylor, from the county of Worcester; and Mr. Bishop, from the neighborhood of Rhode Island. To manage the cause against them the present and late governors, three judges of the Supreme Court, fifteen members of the Senate, twenty from among the most respectable of the clergy, ten or twelve of the first characters at the bar, judges of probate, high sheriffs of counties, and many other respectable people, merchants, &c., Generals Heath, Lincoln, Brooks, and others of the late army. With all this ability in support of the cause, I am pretty well satisfied we shall lose the question, unless we can take off some of the [p.573] opposition by amendments. I do not mean such as are to be made conditions of the ratification, but recommendations only. Upon this plan I flatter myself we may possibly get a majority of twelve or fifteen, if not more."
Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitutiont, Vol. 5, p.577
Permit me, sir, to observe, that the measures of our present legislature do not exhibit the real character of the state. They are equally reprobated and abhorred by gentlemen of the learned professions, by the whole mercantile body, and by most of the respectable farmers and mechanics. The majority of the administration is composed of a licentious number of men, destitute of education, and many of them void of principle. From anarchy and confusion they derive their temporary consequence; and this they endeavor to prolong by debauching the minds of the common people, whose attention is wholly directed to the abolition of debts, public and private. With these are associated the disaffected of every description, particularly those who were unfriendly during the war. Their paper money system, rounded in oppression and fraud, they are determined to support at every hazard; and, rather than relinquish their favorite pursuit, they trample upon the most sacred obligations. As a proof of this, they refused to comply with a requisition of Congress for repealing all laws repugnant to the treaty of peace with Great Britain, and urged, as their principal reason, that it would be calling in question the propriety of their former measures.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.48
§29. The Articles of Confederation had scarcely been adopted, before the defects of the plan, as a frame of national government, began to manifest themselves. The instrument, indeed, was framed under circumstances very little favorable to a just survey of the subject in all its proper bearings. The States, while colonies, had been under the controlling authority of a foreign sovereignty, whose restrictive legislation had been severely felt, and whose prerogatives, real or assumed, had been a source of incessant jealousy and alarm. Of course, they had nourished a spirit of resistance to all external authority, and having had no experience of the inconveniences of the want of some general government to superintend their common affairs and interests, they reluctantly yielded anything, and deemed the least practicable delegation of power quite sufficient for national purposes. Notwithstanding the Confederation purported on its face to contain articles of perpetual union, it was easy to see, that its principal powers respected the operations of war, and were dormant in times of peace; and that even these were shadowy and unsubstantial, since they were stripped of all coercive authority. It was remarked, by an eminent statesman, that by this political compact the Continental Congress has exclusive power for the following purposes, without being able to execute one of them:-It may make and conclude treaties; but can only recommend the observance of them. It may appoint ambassadors; but it cannot defray even the expense of their tables. It may borrow money in its own name, or the faith of the Union; but it cannot pay a dollar. It may coin money; but it cannot import an ounce of bullion. It may make war, and determine what number of troops are necessary; but it cannot raise a single soldier. In short, it may declare everything, but it can do nothing. And, [p.49] strong as this description may seem, it was literally true; for Congress had little more than the power of recommending its measures to the good will of the States.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.62
§51. But there were other evils of a much greater magnitude, which required a National Government, clothed with powers adequate to the more effectual establishment of justice. There were territorial disputes between the States, as to their respective boundaries and jurisdiction, constantly exciting mutual irritations, and introducing border warfare. Laws were perpetually made in the States, interfering with the sacred rights of private contracts, suspending the remedies in regard to them, or discharging them by a payment or tender in worthless paper money, or in some depreciated or valueless property. The debts due to foreigners were, notoriously, refused payment; and many obstructions were put in the way of the recovery of them. The public debt was left wholly unprovided for; and a disregard of the public faith had become so common a reproach among us, that it almost ceased to attract observation. Indeed, in some of the States, the operation of private and public distresses was felt so severely, that the administration, even of domestic justice, was constantly interfered with; the necessity of suspending it was boldly vindicated; and in some cases, even a resort to arms was encouraged to prevent it. Nothing but a National Government, capable, from its powers and resources, of overawing the spirit of rebellion, and of aiding in the establishment of a sound currency, just laws, and solid public credit, could remedy the existing evils.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.81
§82. There is one question of great practical importance, as to the apportionment of Representatives, which has constantly been found to involve much embarrassment and difficulty; and that is, how and in what manner the apportionment is to be made. The language of the Constitution is that "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States, &c., according to their respective numbers;" and at the first view it would not seem to involve the slightest difficulty. A moment's reflection will dissipate the illusion, and teach us, that there is a difficulty intrinsic in the very nature of the subject. In regard to direct taxes, the natural course would be to assume a particular sum to be raised, as three millions of dollars; and to apportion it among the States according to their relative numbers. But even here, there will always be a very small fractional amount incapable of exact distribution, since the numbers in each State will never exactly coincide with any common divisor, or give an exact aliquot part for each State [p.82] without any remainder. But, as the amount may be carried through a long series of descending money fractions, it may be ultimately reduced to the smallest fraction of any existing, or even imaginary coin.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.148
§177. The next power of Congress is, to "coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coins, and fix the standard of weights and measures." The object of the power over the coinage and currency of the country is, to produce [p.149] uniformity in the value of money throughout the Union, and thus to save us from the embarrassments of a perpetually fluctuating and variable currency. If each State might coin money, as it pleased, there would be no security for any uniform coinage, or any uniform standard of value; and a great deal of base and false coin, would constantly be thrown into the market. The evils from this cause are abundantly felt among the small principalities of continental Europe. The power to fix the standard of weights and measures is a matter of great public convenience, although it has hitherto remained in a great measure dormant. The introduction of the decimal mode of calculation, in dollars and cents, instead of the old and awkward system of pounds, shillings, and pence, has been found of great public convenience, although it was at first somewhat unpopular. A similar system in weights and measures has been thought by many statesmen to have advantages equally great and universal. At all events, the power is safe in the hands of Congress, and may hereafter be acted upon, whenever either our foreign, or our domestic intercourse, shall imperiously require a new system.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.149
§178. The next power of Congress is, "to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities, and current coin of the United States." This is a natural, and, in a just view, an indispensable appendage to the power to borrow money, and to coin money. Without it, there would be no adequate means for the General Government to punish frauds or forgeries, detrimental to its own interests, and subversive of public and private confidence. [p.151]
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.189
§230. The first clause is, "No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque or reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold or silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts; or grant any title of nobility."
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.190
§233. The prohibition to "coin money" is necessary to our domestic interests. The existence of the power in the States would defeat the salutory objects intended, by confiding the like power to the National Government. It would have a tendency to introduce a base and variable currency, perpetually liable to frauds, and embarrassing to the commercial intercourse of the States.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.190
§234. The prohibition to "emit bills of credit." Bills of credit are a well-known denomination of paper money, issued by the Colonies before the Revolution. These bills of credit had no adequate funds appropriated to redeem them; and though on their face value they were often declared payable in gold and silver, they were in fact never so paid. The consequence was, that they became the common currency of the country, in a constantly depreciating state, ruinous to the commerce and credit, and disgraceful to the good faith of the country. The evils of the system were a most aggravated nature, and could not be cured, except by an entire prohibition of any future issues of paper money. And, indeed, the prohibition to coin money would be utterly nugatory, if the States might still issue a paper currency for the same purpose.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.190
§235. But the inquiry here naturally occurs; What is the true meaning of the phrase "bills of credit" in the Constitution? In its enlarged, and perhaps in its literal sense, it may comprehend any instrument, by which a State engages to pay money at a future day (and, of course, for which it obtains a present credit) and thus it would include a certificate given for money borrowed. But the language of the Constitution itself, [p.191] and the mischief to be prevented, which we know from the history of our country, equally limit the interpretation of the terms. The word "emit" is never employed in describing those contracts, by which a State binds itself to pay money at a future day for services actually received, or for money borrowed for present use. Nor are instruments, executed for such purposes, in common language denominated "bills of credit." To emit bills of credit, conveys to the mind the idea of issuing paper, intended to circulate through the community for ordinary purposes, as money, which paper is redeemable at a future day. This is the sense, in which the terms of the Constitution have been generally understood. The phrase (as we have seen) was well known, and generally used to indicate the paper currency, issued by the States during their colonial dependence. During the war of our Revolution, the paper currency issued by Congress was constantly denominated, in the acts of that body, bills of credit; and the like appellation was applied to similar currency issued by the States. The phrase had thus acquired a determinate and appropriate meaning. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, bills of credit were universally understood to signify a paper medium intended to circulate between individuals, and between government and individuals, for the ordinary purposes of society. Such a medium has always been liable to considerable fluctuation. Its value is continually changing; and these changes, often great and sudden, expose individuals to immense losses, are the sources of ruinous speculations, and destroy all proper confidence between man and men. In no country, more than our own, had these truths been felt in all their force. In none, had more intense suffering, a more wide-spreading ruin accompanied the system. It was, therefore, the object of the prohibition to cut up the whole mischief by the roots, because it had been deeply felt throughout all the States, and had deeply affected the prosperity of all. The object of the prohibition was not to prohibit the thing, when it bore a particular name; but to prohibit the thing, whatever form or name it might assume. If the words are not merely empty sounds, the prohibition must comprehend the [p.192] emission of any paper medium by a State government for the purposes of common circulation. It would be preposterous to suppose, that the Constitution meant solemnly to prohibit an issue under one denomination, leaving the power complete to issue the same thing under another. It can never be seriously contended, that the Constitution means to prohibit names, and not things; to deal with shadows, and to leave substances. What would be the consequence of such a construction? That a very important act, big with great and ruinous mischief, and on threat account forbidden by words the most appropriate for its description, might yet be performed by the substitution of a name. That the Constitution, even in one of its vital provisions, might be openly evaded by giving a new name to an old thing. Call the thing a bill of credit, and it is prohibited. Call the same thing a certificate, and it is constitutional.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.192
§236. Connected with this, is the prohibition, No State shall "make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." The history of the State laws on this subject, while we were Colonies, as well as during the Revolution, and afterwards before the adoption of the Constitution, is startling at once to our morals, to our patriotism, and to our sense of justice. In the intermediate period between the commencement of the Revolutionary War, and the adoption of the Constitution, the system had attained its most appalling character. Not only was paper money declared to be a tender in payment of debts; but other laws, having the same general object, and interfering with private debts, under the name of appraisement laws, installment laws, and suspension laws, thickened upon the statute book of many States in the Union, until all public confidence was lost, and all private evils, resulting from this source, can scarcely be comprehended in our day. But they were so enormous, that the whole country seemed involved in a general bankruptcy; and fraud and chicanery obtained an undisputed mastery. Nothing but an absolute prohibition, like that contained in the Constitution, could arrest the overwhelming flood; and it was accordingly hailed with the most sincere joy by all good citizens. It has given but that healthy [p.193] and sound currency, and that solid private credit, which constitute the true foundation of our prosperity, industry, and enterprise.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.235
§312. The propriety of the delegation of jurisdiction, in "cases arising under the Constitution," rests on the obvious consideration, that there ought always to be some constitutional method of giving effect to constitutional provisions. What, for instance, would avail restrictions on the authority of the State Legislatures, without some constitutional mode of enforcing the observance of them? The States are, by the Constitution, prohibited from doing a variety of things; some of which are incompatible with the interests of the Union; others, with its peace and safety; others, with the principles of good government. The imposition of duties on imported articles, the declaration of war, and the emission of paper money, are examples of each kind. No man of sense will believe, that such prohibitions would be scrupulously regarded, without some effectual power in the Government to restrain, or correct the infractions of them. The power must be either a direct negative on the State laws, or an authority in the National courts to overrule such, as shall manifestly be in contravention to the Constitution. The latter course was thought by the convention to be preferable to the former; and it is, without question, by far the most acceptable to the States.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.237
§317. Cases arising under the Constitution, as contradistinguished from those, arising under the laws of the United States, are such as arise from the powers conferred, or privileges granted, or rights claimed, or protection secured, or prohibitions contained, in the Constitution itself, independent of any particular statute enactment. Many cases of this sort may easily be enumerated. Thus, if a citizen of one State should be denied the privileges of a citizen in another State; if a State should coin money, or make paper money a tender; if a person, tried for a crime against the United States, should be denied a trial by jury, or a trial in the State, where the crime is charged to be committed; if a person, held to labor, or service, in one State, under the laws thereof, should escape into another, and there should be a refusal to deliver him up to the party, to whom such service or labor may be due, in these, and many other cases, the question, to be judicially decided, would be a case arising under the Constitution. On the other hand, cases [p.238] arising under the laws of the United States, are such as grow out of the legislation of Congress, within the scope of their constitutional authority, whether they constitute the right, or privilege, or claim, or protection, or alefence, of the party, in whole or in part, by whom they are asserted. The same reasoning applies to cases arising under treaties. Indeed, wherever, in a judicial proceeding, any question arises, touching the validity of a treaty, or statute, or authority, exercised under the United States, or touching the construction of any clause of the Constitution, or any statute, or treaty, of the United States; or touching the validity of any statute, or authority exercised under any State, on the ground of repugnancy to the Constitution, laws, or treaties, of the United States, it has been invariably held to be a case, to which the judicial power of the United States extends.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.266
§368. A moment's consideration will show us the necessity and propriety of this provision, in cases, where the jurisdiction of the State courts is unquestionable. Suppose a contract, for the payment of money, is made between citizens of the same State, and performance thereof is sought in the courts of that State; no person can doubt, that the jurisdiction completely and exclusively attaches, in the first instance, to such [p.267] courts. Suppose at the trial, the defendant sets up, in his defence, a tender under a State law, making paper money a good tender, or a State law, impairing the obligation of such contract, which law, if binding, would defeat the suit. The constitution of the United States has declared, that no State shall make any thing but gold or silver coin a tender in payment of debts, or pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts. If Congress shall not have passed a law, providing for the removal of such a suit to the courts of the United States, must not the State court proceed to hear, and determine it? Can a mere plea in defence be, of itself, a bar to further proceedings, so as to prohibit an inquiry into its truth, or legal propriety, when no other tribunal exists, to which judicial cognizance of such cases is confided? Suppose an indictment for a crime in a State court, and the defendant should allege in his defence, that the crime was created by an ex post facto act of the State, must not the State court, in the exercise of a jurisdiction, which has already rightfully attached, have a right to pronounce on the validity, and sufficiency of the defence? It would be extremely difficult, upon any legal principles, to give a negative answer to these inquiries. Innumerable instances of the same sort might be stated in illustration of the position; and unless the State courts could sustain jurisdiction in such cases, this clause of the sixth article would be without meaning or effect; and public mischiefs, of a most enormous magnitude, would inevitably ensue.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.341
[p.341] The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority; or by that of the respective States: Fixing the standard of weights and measures throughout the United States: Regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians, not members of any of the States; provided that the legislative right of any State within its own limits be not infringed or violated: Establishing and regulating post-offices from one State to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said officers: Appointing all the officers of the naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in the service of the United States: Making rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces, and directing their operations.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.342
The United States in Congress assembled shall never engage in a war; nor grant letters of marque and reprisal in time of peace; nor enter into any treaties or alliances; nor coin money; nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the sums and expenses necessary for the defence and welfare of the United States, or any of them; nor emit bills; nor borrow money on the credit of the United States; nor appropriate money; nor agree upon the number of vessels of war to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to be raised; nor appoint a Commander-in-Chief of the army or navy; unless nine States assent to the same; nor shall a question on any other point, except for adjourning from day to day, be determined, unless by the votes of a majority of the United States in Congress assembled.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.343
All bills of credit emitted, moneys borrowed, and debts contracted, by or under the authority of Congress, before the assembling of the United States, in pursuance of the present Confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof, the said United States, and the public faith, are hereby solemnly pledged.
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.349
5. To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures:
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.349
6. To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States:
Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United Statest, p.351
1. No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.1
Good money must have an intrinsic value. The United States of America cannot make its shadow legal tender for debts payable in money without ultimately bringing upon their foreign commerce and their home industry a catastrophe, which will be the more overwhelming the longer the day of wrath puts off its coming. Our federal constitution was designed to end forever the emission of bills of credit as legal tender in payment of debts, alike by the individual states and the United States; and it will have that effect, if it is rightly interpreted and firmly enforced.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.2 - p.3
The opinion thus confidently expressed, if it should be accepted as law, would be a death blow to the constitution; in defiance of which it not only gives a sanction to irredeemable paper money, but clothes the government with powers that have no defined limit in its relations to the people. Of the nine who composed the court, Stephen J. Field alone gave a dissenting opinion; but there stood at his side, invincible vouchers for the rightness of his dissent, James Wilson, Oliver Ellsworth, and William Paterson, all three of whom the president of the convention which formed our constitution selected from among its framers to be its earliest judicial interpreters. And with them are to be counted a cloud of witnesses, among whom are the master-builders of the constitution. Roger Sherman, George Washington, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.4
To set the subject in the clearest light, it will be proper to trace the history of American bills of credit until they were abolished by Massachusetts and Connecticut; to revive the memory of the great struggle for their suppression by the separate colonies or states to the end of 1786; and to ascertain what decision on paper money was made by the constitutional convention, and accepted, one by one, by every state. It will then be the time to examine the new interpretation of the constitution by the present court; and ask after the defenses of the people against the revolution with which they are threatened.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.6
Immediately all the coin then in Massachusetts was exported to England, and the new stock followed as fast as it came in from abroad. The vain sorrow of the province expressed itself in December, 1697, by the prohibition of "the export of coin, silver money or bullion."* In June, 1700, a joint committee of the council and representatives, to be aided by the advice of merchants and others, was appointed to consider how to revive trade, and find out some suitable medium to supply the scarcity of "money;"* and it is to be noted, that the word "money" in all colonial legislation was used exclusively for gold and silver coin.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.6 - p.7
The bills of credit of the defunct government remained a legal tender in all payments except of special contracts. The first issue of bills of credit of Massachusetts after it became a royal province, was in November, 1702, for ten thousand pounds, in value "equal to money," but to be accepted in all public payments at the advance of five percent. A tax was ordered for their redemption, and it remained the custom at every emission of bills of credit to grant a seemingly sufficient fund for their payment.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.7 - p.8
The original act, by which New Hampshire in 1709 emitted its first paper money, was destroyed by fire; a supplemental act of the following year seems to show that they were left to find their own way into circulation.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.8
The terms of the issue of Massachusetts, which was delayed till 1710, corresponded with those of Connecticut; but in 1712 the statute book complains that "money," which in those days meant only coin, "was not to be had;" and it was enacted that for any debt contracted within ten years after the last day of October, 1705, no debtor, after tendering payment of his full debt in lawful bills of credit on the province, should be disturbed in person or estate.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.9
Rhode Island, in July, 1710, on its first emission of bills of credit, declared them equal in value to "money," and made them receivable in all public payments.* In October, 1715, they were made lawful pay even for specialties; but as this enactment threatened "great strife and contention among the inhabitants" of the colony, it was repealed in the following June.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.9
New York entered eagerly into the defence of its northern frontier, and in November, 1709, for the first time involved itself in the use of bills of credit.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.9
In Pennsylvania, where the Friends had more power, the spread of paper money was for a while arrested.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.10
In November, 1711, Rhode Island discharged a claim by a loan of its bills of credit to the amount of three hundred pounds for four years, free of interest.* South Carolina gave a wider development to this new form of using paper. Its legislature, on the pretext of creating a fund to sink former bills of credit and to encourage trade and commerce, in July, 1712, ordered fifty-two thousand pounds in new bills of credit to be stamped and put out at interest in loans.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.11 - p.12
The loan of bills of credit by Massachusetts in 1714 was managed at the seat of government. But why should Boston be favored? "That the husbandry, fishery, and other trade of the province might be encouraged and promoted,"* "bills of credit on the province to the amount of one hundred thousand pounds" were in 1716 ordered to be distributed through a loan office in each county. But why should borrowers in the smaller townships be forced to travel to their shire town? Let a public money-lender be near every man's door. By the statute of March, 1721, fifty thousand pounds were distributed among borrowers in each several town according to its proportion in the last province tax.* Again, in 1728, sixty thousand pounds in bills of credit were proportionately loaned among the several towns, even on personal security, at the rate of six percent for six years, after which repayment was to be made in five yearly installments.* Of course "money" disappeared; not even a silver penny was to be had; the small change became of paper.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.12
In 1717, the council of New Hampshire was zealous to follow the fashion of issuing paper money by loans. Its more cautious Assembly restrained their zeal, and confined the issue to fifteen thousand pounds.* New Hampshire remained one of the most cautious of the colonies.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.12
In October, 1718, Connecticut, to prevent oppression by the rigorous exaction of money, declared its bills of credit legal tender for debts contracted between the twelfth day of July, 1709, and the twelfth day of July, 1727. The time for the operation of the law was afterwards extended to 1735.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.13
The eagerness of borrowers undermined the scruples of Pennsylvania; in March, 1723, when there was universal peace, that colony issued bills of credit for loans to individuals, and not only compelled creditors to receive the bills at par or "lose their debts," but ordered sellers to receive them at their nominal value in the sale of goods or lands or tenements, or "forfeit a sum from thirty shillings to fifty pounds."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.14
In 1731 the legislature of Maryland would have emitted bills of credit but for the negative of the proprietary of the province. In 1733, ninety thousand pounds in its bills of credit were brought into circulation by loans at four percent. The bills were a tender for contracts made after the enactment, and for twenty-three years their amount was not enlarged.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.14 - p.15
The next development of the colonial system of paper money was a partial repudiation. In February, 1737, less than forty-seven years after the first emission of bills of credit by Massachusetts, that colony issued nine thousand pounds of a new tenor, of which one dollar was to be equal to three of the old, and which, after five years, was to be redeemed at par in silver and gold.* When the time of redemption came round they were not paid off, but by a further repudiation four pounds for one was made the rate in exchanging the old tenor for the new.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.15
The people of South Carolina, having the best opportunity to grow rich by the great returns made to them for the products of their soil, have recorded their sense of their mistake in the statute of the eleventh of December, 1717, in which they said: "It is found by experience that the multiplicity of the bills of credit hath been the cause of the ruin of our trade and commerce and hath been the great evil of this province, and that it ought with all expedition to be remedied."* To obtain the means for absorbing their bills of credit they enacted a tax on imports and exports; but when the act reached England, it was disallowed from fear that it might prove unfavorable to the interests of Great Britain.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.17
In February, 1748, New Style, Massachusetts, while awaiting its share of this remuneration, invited the governments of Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island to join in abolishing the use of bills of credit; but as no one of the three gave effectual heed to the summons,* the people of Massachusetts proceeded alone. It was estimated that about two millions two hundred thousand pounds of their bits of credit would be outstanding in the year 1749.* In January of that year an act was passed,* redeeming the bills of the old tenor at the rate of forty-five shillings, those of the new tenor at the rate of eleven shillings and three pence, for one Spanish silver dollar; a rate which somewhat exceeded their market value at the time. The bills of credit of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut were excluded by most stringent laws, and Massachusetts, with its quickened industry and established credit, "sat as a queen among the provinces."
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.17 - p.18
To aid in bringing the other New England colonies into the same condition, the parliament of Great Britain in January, 1751, New Style, after the payments due them for their extraordinary services in the war were remitted to each one of them in coin, enacted that "no paper currency, or bills of credit of any kind issued in any of the said colonies or plantations, shall be a legal tender in payment of any private dues whatsoever within any of them." * "No law," writes Adam Smith, "could be more equitable."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.18 - p.19
Roger Sherman, the great statesman of Connecticut, gave his mind to the questions about money and mediums, commerce and exchanges, and having mastered them, in 1752, under the name of Philoeuonomos, "the lover of just laws," he addressed to the men of Connecticut "A caveat against injustice, or an inquiry into the evil consequences of a fluctuating medium of exchange." These are some of his words: "The legislature of Connecticut have at length taken effectual care to prevent a further depreciation of the bills of this colony; the other governments," (meaning New Hampshire and Rhode Island) "not having taken the like prudent care, their bills of credit are still sinking in their value." ... "Money ought to be something of certain value, it being that whereby other things are to be valued."... "And this I would lay down as a principle that can't be denied, that a debtor ought not to pay any debts with less value than was contracted for, without the consent of or against the will of the creditor." . .. "If what is used as a medium of exchange is fluctuating in its value, it is no better than unjust weights and measures, both which are condemned by the laws of God and man; and, therefore, the longest and most universal custom could never make the use of such a medium either lawful or reasonable.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.19 - p.20
"We, in this colony, are seated on a very fruitful soil; the product whereof, with our labor and industry and the divine blessing thereon, would sufficiently furnish us with and procure us all the necessaries of life and as good a medium of exchange as any people in the world have or can desire. But so long as we part with our most valuable commodities for such bills of credit as are no profit, we shall spend great part of our labor and substance for that which will not profit us; whereas if these things were reformed we might be as independent, flourishing and happy a colony as any in the British dominions."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.20
The Connecticut assembly supported the memorialists, excluded the bills of paper money of Rhode Island, and overcoming every embarrassment, at last, like Massachusetts, redeemed every nine shillings of its paper money with one shilling in specie. After the first day of November, 1756, all accounts in Connecticut were kept in lawful money.
Paper money in America From the Beginning of the
Seven Year's War to the Constitutional Convention of the United States.
From 1755-6 to May, 1787.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.21
The establishment of a post by France at the junction of the rivers which form the Ohio, with the design of appropriating the valley of the Mississippi, involved Virginia from May, 1755, in measures of war and immediate and increasing issues of paper bills which from the beginning were made a lawful tender for private debts.* For the new "notes" of April, 1757, it was further ordered that any seller who should demand more for his goods in notes than in gold or silver coin, should "forfeit twenty percent of their value."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.21 - p.22
The treaty of peace between England and France, which was ratified in the early part of 1763, left the middle and southern colonies under extreme embarrassment from their issues of paper. Massachusetts had stood firm by the sole use of coin. Rhode Island, with Stephen Hopkins for its governor and a legislature of which the majority reflected his own uprightness, at once and in spite of the severest opposition, put on its statute book: "Lawful money of this colony is, and shall hereafter be, silver and gold coin; and nothing else;"* and it never again resorted to the emission of paper money, till, in 1775, it took up arms for the defense of its liberties.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.22
Connecticut went through the great French war without issuing bills of credit; but in 1770, after an intermission of twenty-five years, relapsed into the old abuse. *
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.22 - p.23
The legislature of New York in 1770 passed an act for emitting one hundred and twenty thousand pounds in bills of credit, to be put out on loan. The king promptly gave it his negative, but it was successfully reenacted in February of the following year.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.24 - p.25
On the 6th of February, 1782, South Carolina, after declaring that "laws making bills of credit legal tender are found inconvenient," enacted "that from and after the passage of this act, no bill or bills of credit or paper currency whatever shall be considered, taken, or received as a legal tender, payment, or discharge of any debt due, or demand whatsoever."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.25
Rhode Island, in June and November, 1782, ordered all bills and notes to be brought into the treasury. They were struck out of circulation, and new notes, bearing interest, given in their stead.* The increase of paper money in the state was arrested for the coming four years.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.26
The overwhelming evils of paper money formed the subject of universal deliberation as affecting domestic, inter-state, and international relations, which could be effectually remedied only by a central government.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.26
On the 21st of March, 1783, Pennsylvania, which hardly knew what it was doing and had not yet gathered up the strength of its will, was the first to renew in peace the evil usage of the times of war, and issued three hundred thousand dollars in what it called treasury notes, the lowest of one quarter of a dollar, the highest of twenty dollars. Two years later, but after great resistance, its legislature issued one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the lowest note of three pence. But in the decisive hour Pennsylvania proved the implacable foe of paper money.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.27 - p.28
The policy of New York was an uncertain one. In 1782 it incorporated the bank of North America. In April, 1786, the opening year of the final great movement for a closer union of the states, it placed an emission of two hundred thousand pounds in bills of credit with loan officers, to be loaned on mortgage security; and they were made a legal tender in any suit for debt or damages, and the costs of suit. The bills were further to be received for duties collected at the port of New York by the state.* General McDougall, the brave soldier and patriot, though sick unto death, insisted on being carried to the senate, that, as the last act of his public life, he might give his voice against the proposal to emit paper money.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.28
The ill-considered and happily transient desire of New York to levy duties on the neighboring states whose imports would naturally come through its great and more convenient harbor, combined with the passion for paper money to paralyze her influence in the coming convention for the establishment of union.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.28
From end to end of the whole country its best men were seeking remedies for what Madison called "the epidemic malady" of paper money.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.28 - p.29 - p.30
Following the lead of Pennsylvania, New Jersey had been the third state after the peace to issue paper money; in December, 1783, it issued thirty-one and a quarter thousand pounds, and in 1786 it struggled to issue a larger amount. William Paterson, the same who was afterwards a member of our supreme court, resisted the proposal with inflexible courage, and here are some of the words which he employed: "An increase of paper money, especially if it be a tender, will destroy what little credit is left, will bewilder conscience in the mazes of dishonest speculations, will allure some and constrain others into the perpetration of knavish acts, will turn vice into a legal virtue, and sanctify iniquity by law. Men have, in the ordinary transactions of life, temptations enough to lead them from the path of rectitude; why then pass laws for the purpose, or give legislative sanction to positive acts of iniquity? Lead us not into temptation is a part of our Lord's Prayer, worthy of attention at all times, and especially at the present."* In the conflict of forces, the two parties were nearly equal. The popular branch of the legislature gave way to its illusions; the council, having at first refused to concur, thought it the part of prudence to succumb; but the desire to escape the taxation of its commerce by the state of New York clinched the fidelity of New Jersey to the union.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.30
In the summer of 1785 Richard Henry Lee, then president of congress, warned Washington of a plan formed for issuing a large sum of paper money in the next assembly of their state, adding as his opinion: "The greatest foes in the world could not devise a more effectual plan for ruining Virginia. I should suppose every friend to his country, every honest and sober man, would join heartily to reprobate so nefarious a plan of speculation."* "I never have heard," answered Washington, in August, "and I hope never shall hear any serious mention of a paper emission in this state. Yet ignorance is the tool of design, and is often set to work suddenly and unexpectedly."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.30
In the same year, George Mason wrote: "They may pass a law to issue paper money, but twenty laws will not make the people receive it. Paper money is rounded upon fraud and knavery."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.31
As the danger drew nearer, Washington, on the 1st of August, 1786, wrote to Jefferson: "Other states are falling into very foolish and wicked plans of emitting paper money."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.31 - p.32
When later in the year the proposal to issue paper money was brought up in the house of delegates of Virginia, Madison spoke as follows: "Paper money is unjust; to creditors, if a legal tender; to debtors, if not legal tender, by increasing the difficulty of getting specie. It is unconstitutional, for it affects the rights of property as much as taking away equal value in land. It is pernicious, destroying confidence between individuals; discouraging commerce; enriching sharpers; vitiating morals; reversing the end of government; and conspiring with the examples of other states to disgrace republican governments in the eyes of mankind."* Moved by his words and the well-known opinions of Washington, Richard Henry Lee, and George Mason, the house of delegates of Virginia, on the first day of November, resolved by a vote of eighty-five against seventeen that an emission of paper money would be "unjust, impolitic, and destructive of public and private confidence, and of that virtue which is the basis of republican government."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.32 - p.33
To Jabez Bowen, of Rhode Island, Washington wrote on the 9th of January, 1787: "Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice;"* and he restrained his keenest sorrow at the loss of General Greene by the thought that Greene himself might have preferred an early death to the scenes which it seemed probable many of his surviving compatriots might live to bemoan.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.33 - p.34
"To assign reasons for this opinion would be as unnecessary as tedious. The ground has been so often trod, that a place hardly remains untouched. In a word, the necessity arising from a want of specie is represented as greater than it really is. I contend, that it is by the substance, not with the shadow of a thing, we are to be benefitted. The wisdom of man, in my humble opinion, cannot at this time devise a plan, by which the credit of paper money would be long supported; consequently depreciation keeps pace with the quantity of the emission, and articles for which it is exchanged rise in a greater ratio than the sinking value of the money. Wherein, then, is the farmer, the planter, the artisan benefitted? An evil equally great is, the door it immediately opens for speculation, by which the least designing, and perhaps most valuable, part of the community are preyed upon by the more knowing and crafty speculators."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.34 - p.35
In New Hampshire a plan for the emission of paper money was printed and sent to the several towns for their judgment. When at the next session in January, 1787, the returns from the towns were received and counted, a majority appeared against paper money. Then the assembly, guided by the counsel of the people, decided that "the legislature cannot, consistently with the constitution, pass an act making paper bills of credit a tender to discharge private contracts, made prior to the passing such act," nor shall "paper money be emitted on any plan which has been proposed."* New Hampshire chose to the great federal convention delegates who were in harmony with the resolves of its towns and legislature. Disquieting symptoms having appeared in Virginia, Madison in April enjoined Monroe, a member of its assembly "to battle paper money."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.35 - p.36
Among the evils for which the new constitution should provide a remedy, Madison enumerated the "familiar violation of contracts in the form of depreciated paper made a legal tender."* In his notes for his own guidance in the federal convention he laid down the principle that, "Paper money may be deemed an aggression on the rights of other states."* Just five weeks before the time for the meeting of the convention, he wrote from congress in New York to Edmund Randolph: "There has been no moment since the peace, at which the federal assent would have been given to paper money."*
The Federal Convention Shuts and Bars the Doors Against Paper money.
From 14th May to 17th September, 1787.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.37
Virginia took the lead, and Randolph, its governor, in his opening speech drew attention to paper money by reminding his hearers that the patriotic authors of the confederation did their work "in the infancy of the science of constitutions and of confederacies, when the havoc of paper money had not been foreseen."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.37 - p.38
Among the delegates of Connecticut were Oliver Ellsworth, who in the federal congress had repeatedly served on committees for the reform of the federal constitution, and Roger Sherman, who in 1752 had published his conviction that good laws and paper money are irreconcilable. They agreed to insist in the convention "that the legislatures of the individual states ought not to possess a right to emit bills of credit for a currency, or in any manner to obstruct the recovery of debts, whereby the interests of foreigners, or the citizens of any other state, may be affected."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.38
The refusal of the convention to confer on the legislature of the United States the power to emit bills of credit or irredeemable paper money in any form is so complete that, according to all rules by which public documents are interpreted, it should not be treated as questionable; but as the truth in this case is of infinite importance, and has been questioned by those in authority, the wrong done to the constitution may justify a simple narrative of the facts, which ample and indisputable records establish, and which no power can alter.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.39
Of the legislature of the United States under our present constitution, the court insists that "congress is clearly authorized to emit bills of credit." But is it so?
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.41 - p.42
The question before the convention was: Shall power be granted to the legislature of the United States "to emit bills of credit?" The first witness is Gouverneur Morris, a man free from illusions; a delegate from the state which contained Philadelphia, then the most opulent city in the thirteen states; and as by his interests he was nearly connected with the city and state of New York, he thoroughly represented the interests of commerce. He moved to strike out the grant of power to "emit bills on the credit of the United States," saying: "If the United States have credit, such bills will be unnecessary; if they have not, will be unjust and useless." The seconder of Gouverneur Morris was Pierce Butler, a delegate from South Carolina, then the richest commercial state in the South. He remarked in the course of debate that "paper is a legal tender in no country in Europe," and he was urgent to withhold from the government of the United States the power to make it so.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.42 - p.43
Madison interposed: "Will it not be sufficient to prohibit the making" the bills "a tender?"* Gorham, in reply to Madison, held that no accompanying prohibition was sufficient to make it safe to grant to the legislature of the United States the power to emit bills of credit. He spoke absolutely "for striking the words out," saying: "If the words stand, they may suggest and lead to the measure."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.43
The words of Oliver Ellsworth, our third chief justice, were: "This is a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money. The mischiefs of the various experiments which have been made are now fresh in the public mind, and have excited the disgust of all the respectable part of America."
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.43
Randolph expressed "his antipathy to paper money;" but "could not agree to strike out the words, as he could not foresee all the occasions that might arise."
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.43
James Wilson, in concurrence with Ellsworth, said: "It will have a most salutary influence on the credit of the United States to remove the possibility of paper money. This expedient can never succeed whilst its mischiefs are remembered; and, as long as it can be resorted to, it will be a bar to other resources."
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.44
Madison, agreeing with the journal of the convention, records that the grant of power to emit bills of credit was refused by a majority of more than four to one. Eleven men took part in the discussion; and every one of the eleven, whether he spoke for or against the grant of the power, Gouverneur Morris, Pierce Buffer, James Madison, Nathaniel Gorham, George Mason, John F. Mercer, Oliver Ellsworth, Edmund Randolph, James Wilson, George Reed, and John Langdon, each and all, understood the vote to be a denial to the legislature of the United States of the power to emit paper money. Take the men, one by one, and see how weighty is the witness of each individual; take them together and add the consideration that they, every one of them, unanimously support each other and are contradicted by no one, and who shall dare question their testimony? The evidence is perfect; no power to emit paper money was granted to the legislature of the United States.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.44 - p.45
By refusing to the United States the power of issuing bills of credit, the victory over paper money was but half complete. The same James Wilson, who twelve days before with Oliver Ellsworth had taken a chief part in refusing to the United States the power to emit paper money, and the same Roger Sherman, who in 1752 had put forth all his energy to break up paper money in Connecticut, jointly took the lead. The first draft of the constitution had forbidden the states to emit bills of credit without the consent of the legislature of the United States; on the 28th of August they jointly offered this notion:
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.45
"No state shall coin money, nor emit bills of credit, nor make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts," making the prohibition absolute. Roger Sherman, animated by zeal for the welfare of the coming republic of countless millions, exclaims in the debate: "This is the favorable crisis for crushing paper money." His word was the will of the convention, and the states, by a majority of eight and a half against one and a half-that is, by more than five to one-forbade the states, under any circumstances, to emit bills of credit. This is the way in which our constitution "shut and barred the door against paper money" and "crushed" it.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.45 - p.46
Nothing is wanting to the perfect strength of the truth, that the constitution put an end to paper money in all the United States and in all the several states; and yet a lawyer, who, but for his own refusal, would twelve years ago have become chief justice of the United States, in the line of succession from Ellsworth, further "finds in the legislative history of the country affirmative authority of the highest kind": "No suggestion of the existence of a power to make paper a legal tender," such are his words, "can be found in the legislative history of the country. Had such a power lurked in the constitution, as construed by those who ordained and administered it, we should find it so recorded. The occasion for referring to it has repeatedly arisen; and had such a power existed, it would have been recognised and acted on. It is hardly too much to say, therefore, that the uniform and universal judgment of statesmen, jurists, and lawyers has denied the constitutional right of congress to make paper a legal tender for debts to any extent whatever."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.47
AND yet the court which was set apart to be the keystone of the constitution insists that "the power of congress to emit bills of credit is now clearly established by decisions."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.49
When England, unhappily for herself and for the world, entered upon its long career of ineffectual war to crush the rising efforts of liberty on the continent of Europe, the privy council of England authorized the bank of England to suspend specie payments, thus degrading the bills of the bank and ultimately introducing a long period of paper money. In reply to the reproaches of the friends of European freedom in parliament, Pitt acknowledged the undoubted illegality of the order, declaring that it could be justified only by the most urgent necessity*; and the parliament of England, being then mainly in the hands of an aristocracy, hostile to reforms and progress in liberty, accepted the illegal order, in its zeal to crush the invincible strivings for constitutional liberty on the continent of Europe.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.49 - p.50
So long as we remained dependent colonies, not only was the use of paper money in Great Britain unknown, Great Britain was moreover honorably careful for the purity of its coin. The great revolution in 1688 found that the silver coinage of England, which was then a legal tender, had become debased by wear and by clipping to the amount of twenty percent. In November, 1695, before the wars of that revolution came to an end, thorough provision was made by statute for remedying the ill state of the silver coin of the kingdom.* The re-coinage took place under the auspices of the lord keeper Somers, who was the greatest British statesman of his time, and of Montague. They took counsel of John Locke, the wise expounder of the British revolution, by whose clear and firm advice they were instructed, and by whose writings they were supported in public opinion, when they established as the sole legal tender in payment of debts coin rated as near as possible at its own intrinsic value. John Adams loved to extol these writings of Locke as sufficient to give thorough instruction on the whole "nature of coin, credit and circulation" and to keep in memory that Sir Isaac Newton as an officer of the mint took part in the re-coinage.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.50 - p.51
"The re-coinage of the gold coin in England on the same principle of justice commenced in the year 1774 and was completed in the year 1777, so writes one, who himself held high office at the time.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.51
The court falls into a stupendous error when it asserts that the power of impressing upon notes the quality of being a legal tender for the payment of private debts was universally understood to belong to sovereignty in Europe and America at the time of the flaming and adoption of the constitution of the United States. We have already seen that Pierce Buffer, of South Carolina, one of its framers, asserted in the convention, "Paper money is a legal tender in no country in Europe,"* and his assertion was at the time of the calling of the convention strictly true.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.51 - p.52
In Britain from the revolution in 1688 to 1788, no issue of irredeemable currency or debased coin as legal tender was made by the government or suffered to be made under its authority. This was thoroughly well known by the convention which flamed our constitution. The assertion of the supreme court of the lawfulness of paper money in Great Britain before the establishment of our constitution finds no authority in statutes* or histories. The spirit and the letter of the statute book and the spirit and opinions of all men of business in Great Britain, before the era of the French revolution, did not suffer the rising even of a thought for the issue of paper money as legal tender by the state or by its authority. A statute of 1750 peremptorily forbade the issue of any such paper in New England, and in the other colonies it was resisted through the royal prerogative.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.52 - p.53
The history of France is, if possible, still more in conflict with the assertion of the court; for in France one experiment with paper money before, and one which reached its greatest excesses a very few years after, the inauguration of our constitution, were attended by the most appalling consequences. During the infancy of Louis XV., a regent who combined absolute rule with atheism in its corruptest form of a supreme worship of pleasure, forced paper money upon the nation, so that the "gainers of scandalous fortunes out of the public misery triumphed in the common ruin of the state and of commerce." Cardinal Dubois, who took part in the education of the regent and rose to be the ruling minister of the kingdom, defined the French monarchy "a government which turns bankrupt whenever it likes."* The unanimous public opinion of France has pronounced the verdict which the world has confirmed: "It was an insanity of insolence thus to overturn the whole economical existence of society from eagerness for gain and the intoxication of gaming. Revolutions have sprung from less grievous wrongs."
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.53 - p.54
In the last years of the eighteenth century, France gradually relapsed into the use of paper money. This second fall was too late to have an influence on the framers of our constitution; and if it could have had any, must have acted as a warning. The evil came to a head when the forces of the revolution were gathered into the hands of a desperate, tyrannical, and merciless faction, and paper money reappeared under the name of assignats. The judgment of the world has been voiced by Thiers: "With the immensity of good which the French revolution has done to France and to the world, two terrible recollections weigh on its memory; they are the scaffold and paper money."* And shall the insane acts of a profligate regent, or of accidental passion triumphing in the whirlwind of change, or even the ill considered but well meant impulses of patriots in the extreme perils of their country, furnish ruling precedents to the highest court of a republic of sixty millions, rather than the calm and wise, the just and patriotic decision of the lovers of their country who fashioned our constitution?
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.72 - p.73
We are now the citizens of a commonwealth which for opulence, and the number of its people, exceeds any present or former republic, and almost any empire or kingdom of the civilized world of to-day, and it is just to consider our relations to the rest of the world. Obligations as old as the life of the country qualify the legislative power of congress. When the United States made their declaration of independence, they announced to the world "their purpose to assume among the powers of the earth" a "separate and equal station;" and by thus taking their seat among the family of nations, they recognised the existence of international law, and with it the obligation of contracts between citizens of other states and our own. Further, the people of the United States, in forming a constitution, were moved to do so, among other reasons, in order to "establish justice." This requires a fixedness of the standard of value which cannot be preserved with the use of paper money. It is in vain to attempt to enable debtors to discharge their debts by payment of currency of less real value than was intended in their contract; for as debts are discharged from day to day, it would require a daily increase of the amount of currency in order to give an impartial advantage to debtors, and this would soon render the currency worthless. What the great industrial class needs is a stable currency, so there may be as little fluctuation in industry as possible. To quicken business under an artificial expansion of currency is to pull out the linchpins from the wheels of the car of industry before starting it on the race at full speed. The sudden increase of prosperity is followed by still greater decline, and the weight of sorrow must fall on the laborers, who, with their families, will be made wretched by the loss of employment.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.74
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.73 - p.74
The only class of men who can be benefited by an uncertain and ever-varying currency is the men who, having too great conceit of their own abilities, and too dating confidence in their own favoring fortune, overvalue the chance of gain and undervalue the chance of loss, and so tempt themselves or are tempted by others to enter into engagements beyond their means to fulfill. They constitute an incalculably small part of our population, and by no means the part that possess the greatest merit, or deserve the greatest sympathy; and when they begin to surmise the delusiveness of their schemes, they are the most ready and the most unscrupulous in their attempts to dictate a policy to the country. Adam Smith, who made the last revision of his work during the year 1783 and the beginning of the year 1784, just in time for the instruction of the framers of our constitution, says: "It is not because they are poor that their payments are irregular or uncertain, but because they are too eager to become excessively rich."
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.74
The country now, with sixty millions of inhabitants, moves with an infinitely increased momentum. The changes that take place when an error has been pursued cannot be recovered but through the efforts of many years, it may be of a generation. There is even danger that, instead of growing better, affairs may grow worse. Let us then see who in our republic are the capitalists, and who the debtors of the country.
The greatest debtor of all is the United States itself. Shall it discharge the money borrowed to save the life of the nation by the use of its own paper money?
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.77
The infinitely most numerous class of capitalists in the United States are those who support life by their constant labor; the greatest number of them are the poor who earn slowly and earn but little. Shall they be paid in paper money or debased coin, and so be defrauded of the hope to set apart a pittance for the day of sickness or old age?
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.77 - p.78
Nothing is safe for all classes of laborers who, as capitalists receive the return for their labor in money, but money of a standard that does not swerve. Terrible were the scenes of anguish, when about fifty years ago emigrants with their wives and children about them, on their way to purchase public lands, discovered that they had exchanged the earnings of their constant and frugal industry for bills that proved to be of bankrupt state banks. The speculator alone delights in a fluctuation in the value of money, for it opens to him new chances of gain. A wavering currency or coin is most deadly to the interests of the poor; for they have the least power to protect themselves against it. They are the first to suffer from a decline in the value of the currency and the last to recover their rights when improvement begins.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.80 - p.81
I have written because I am persuaded that a firm and right establishment of the true relations of money to labor cannot be secure in a republic except by cultivating the mind of its people, and diffusing a knowledge of the truth through all its members. The honest illusions of many men must be dispelled; and their minds, ransomed from error, will discern the truth. Paper money is a corruption of the blood. Or paper money is the dry rot, which silently and unseen consumes the beams and joists which support the house and its floors.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.82
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.82 -- Appendix I.
Opinion on paper money, as expressed in 1786 by THOMAS PAINE, the author of "Common Sense." (Thomas Paine. Dissertations on Government, &c, Phila. Feb. 18, 1786. The Political Writings of Thomas Paine, &c. in 2 vols., Davidson's Charlestown Ed. Vol. I. 407.)
"The laws of a country ought to be the standard of equity and calculated to impress on the minds of the people the moral as well as the legal obligations of political justice. But tender laws, of any kind, operate to destroy morality, and to dissolve by the pretense of law what ought to be the principle of law to support, reciprocal justice between man and man; and the punishment of a member who should move for such a law ought to be DEATH."
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.82 - p.83
In the interpretation of words a cardinal rule is, to conform to usage. In 1787 every English dictionary defined "money" as metallic coin; and therefore as metallic coin, it must be interpreted in the clause which authorizes the legislature of the United States to borrow money. A second cardinal rule of interpretation is, where a word is used in the same document more than once, it is to be interpreted in every instance as bearing the same meaning, unless there is an obvious and incontrovertible reason to the contrary. The constitution of the United States authorizes their legislature to coin money; and of the meaning of the word in that clause, no doubt can exist.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.83
"I apprehend these general reasonings will be found true with respect to paper money:-That experience has shewn, that in every state where it has been practiced since the revolution, it always carries the gold and silver out of the country, and impoverishes it: that while it remains, all the foreign merchants, trading in America, must suffer and lose by it; therefore, that it must ever be a discouragement to commerce: that every medium of trade should have an intrinsic value, which paper money has not; gold and silver are therefore the fittest for this medium, as they are an equivalent, which paper can never be: that debtors in the assemblies will, whenever they can, make paper money with fraudulent views. That in those states where the credit of the paper money has been best supported, the bills have never kept to their nominal value in circulation; but have constantly depreciated to a certain degree."-Elliot's Debates, IV. 334.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.84
During the Seven Years War, in which Prussia under its patriot king had to fight for existence, Frederick struck off and circulated silver thalers of less intrinsic value than the established coin. For this he did not pretend a right as a sovereign prince; but pleaded necessity; and, after peace came, he exchanged the debased coin for others of purity and full weight.
The instruction on paper money, taught in Russia to its Grand Dukes.
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.84
I have not fallen upon any Russian opinion on paper money given so early as 1788; but Henry Storch, Master of political economy, who was selected by the imperial house to be the tutor and instructor of the two brothers Nicholas and Michael, of whom Nicholas became the Czar, taught them sound lessons in political economy. These he afterwards published, dedicating his work to them.
On paper money his instructions were: "This deadly invention may be looked upon as the greatest chastisement of nations; and nothing but the most commanding necessity can justify its use in the eyes of reason." "Abuse is almost inseparable from the use of it." "When necessity orders to put an end to it, the order comes always too late."*
Opinion of JOHN ADAMS on paper money. JEFFERSON and DESTUTE DE TRACY.
"It is to be desired, that coins had never borne other names than those of their weight, and that the arbitrary denominations, called moneys of account, as L, s., d., etc., had never been used. But when these denominations are admitted and employed in transactions, to diminish the quantity of metal to which they answer, by an alteration of the real coins, it is to steal; and it is a theft which even injures him who commits it. A theft of greater magnitude and still more ruinous, is the making of paper money; it is greater, because in this money there is absolutely no real value; it is more ruinous, because, by its gradual depreciation during all the time of its existence, it produces the effect which would be produced by an infinity of successive deteriorations of the coins. All these iniquities are rounded on the false idea, that money is but a sign."
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.86 - p.87 -- VII. Extract from a speech delivered by DANIEL WEBSTER in the Senate of the United States, on the 21st of December, 1836, on the subject of the Specie Circular.
"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. This is a constitutional principle, perfectly plain, and of the very highest importance. The states are expressly prohibited from making anything but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts; and although no such express prohibition is applied to congress, yet as congress has no power granted to it, in this respect, but to coin money and to regulate the value of foreign coins, it clearly has no power to substitute paper, or anything else, for coin, as a tender in payment of debts and in discharge of contracts. Congress has exercised this power, fully, in both its branches. It has coined money, and still coins it; it has regulated the value of foreign coins, and still regulates their value. The legal tender, therefore, the constitutional standard of value, is established and cannot be overthrown. To overthrow it, would shake the whole system. The constitutional tender is the thing to be preserved, and it ought to be preserved sacredly, under all circumstances."*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.87 - p.88
The inflexible adversary of paper money, detesting it with a hatred almost amounting to a passion, was the chief justice of the United States, John Marshall. While he was on the bench, no case could come before him, in which power was claimed for the United States to issue bills of credit; because at that day he and everybody else well understood and willingly acknowledged that the power to emit bills of credit was withheld from the United States, was forbidden by not being granted. But his opinion of the illegality of the issue of bills of credit by the states gave him the opportunity to declare in terms of universal application that the greatest violation of justice was committed when paper money was made a legal tender in payment of debts.* But the opportunity to express his opinion, which was never offered to him as a judge, he found as a historian in his life of Washington. He claimed for himself and those with whom he acted, an "unabated zeal for the exact observance of public and private engagements." He rightly insisted that the only ways of relief for pecuniary "distresses" were "industry and frugality;" he condemned "all the wild projects of the moment;" he rejected as a delusion every attempt at relief from pecuniary distresses "by the emission of paper money;" or by "a depreciated medium of commerce." These were his opinions through life. He gave them to the public in 1807, and twenty-four years later in a revised edition of his Life of Washington he confirmed his early convictions by the authority of his maturest life.*
George Bancroft, A Plea for the Constitution, p.88
"The federal government-I deny their power to make paper money a legal tender."*
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