As our position on the "Legal Tender" decisions and their effect upon the finances and commerce of the country have been controverted by some of the legal men to whom we have shown our manuscript, at the risk of wearying the reader, we quote the dissenting opinions of the late Chief Justice Chase, and his associates, on the points at issue in those cases, feeling assured that these opinions fully sustain us. If our views are correct as to the effect of these decisions upon the best interests of the country, and their tendency to increase the power of the combinations that now have such control over the different departments of the government, as well as the financial and commercial interests of the country, it follows that no real relief from the oppressions under which the people are suffering can be obtained until the legal tender statutes are repealed, and the latest decisions of the supreme court as to their constitutionality and scope are reversed.
We have claimed that those decisions were in conflict with the provisions of the constitution. Our position is supported by the opinions quoted. We have said that the supreme court of the United States was reorganized in the interests of railroad corporations and other monopolies, before the legal tender questions were re-argued and reversed. The opinions quoted sustain us in this particular. But we desire the reader to examine these opinions and determine for himself.
CHAPTER II.
DISSENTING OPINION OF CHIEF JUSTICE CHASE.
We dissent from the argument and conclusion in the opinion just announced.
The rule, by which the constitutionality of an act of congress passed in the alleged exercise of an implied power is to be tried, is no longer, in this court, open to question. It was laid down in the case of McCulloch v. Maryland, by Chief Justice Marshall, in these words: "Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited but consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional."
And it is the plain duty of the court to pronounce acts of congress not made in the exercise of an express power nor coming within the reasonable scope of this rule, if made in virtue of an implied power, unwarranted by the constitution. Acts of congress not made in pursuance of the constitution are not laws.
Neither of these propositions was questioned in the case of Hepburn v. Griswold. The judges who dissented in that case maintained that the clause in the act of February 25th, 1862, making the United States notes a legal tender in payment of debts, was an appropriate, plainly adapted means to a constitutional end, not prohibited but consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution. The majority of the court as then constituted, five judges out of eight, felt "obliged to conclude that an act making mere promises to pay dollars a legal tender in payments of debts previously contracted is not a means appropriate, plainly adapted, really calculated to carry into effect any express power vested in congress, is inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution, and is prohibited by the constitution."