The power to coin money was a power to determine the fineness, weight, and denominations of the metallic pieces by which values were to be measured; and we do not perceive how this meaning can be extended without doing violence to the very words of the constitution by imposing on them a sense they were never intended to bear. This construction is supported by contemporaneous and all subsequent action of the legislature; by all the recorded utterances of statesmen and jurists, and the unbroken tenor of judicial opinion until a very recent period, when the excitement of the civil war led to the adoption, by many, of different views.
The sense of the convention which framed the constitution is clear, from the account given by Mr. Madison of what took place when the power to emit bills of credit was stricken from the reported draft. He says distinctly that he acquiesced in the motion to strike out, because the government would not be disabled thereby from the use of public notes, so far as they would be safe and proper, while it cut off the pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender either for public or private debts. The whole discussion upon bills of credit proves, beyond all possible question, that the convention regarded the power to make notes a legal tender as absolutely excluded from the constitution.
The papers of the Federalist, widely circulated, in favor of the ratification of the constitution, discuss briefly the power to coin money, as a power to fabricate metallic money, without a hint that any power to fabricate money of any other description was given to congress; and the views which it promulgated may be fairly regarded as the views of those who voted for adoption.
Acting upon the same views, congress took measures for the establishment of a mint, exercising thereby the power to coin money, and has continued to exercise the same power, in the same way, until the present day. It established the dollar as the money unit, determined the quantity and quality of gold and silver of which each coin should consist, and prescribed the denominations and forms of all coins to be issued. Until recently no one in congress ever suggested that that body possessed power to make anything else a standard of value.
Statesmen who have disagreed widely on other points have agreed in the opinion that the only constitutional measures of value are metallic coins, struck as regulated by the authority of congress. Mr. Webster expressed not only his opinion but the universal and settled conviction of the country when he said: "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 mints or foreign coin at rates regulated by congress. This is a constitutional principle, perfectly plain and of the very highest importance. The states are 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 regulate the value of foreign coin, 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."
And this court, in Gwin v. Breedlove, said: "By the constitution of the United States gold and silver coin made current by law can only be tendered in payment of debts." And in The United States v. Marigold, this court, speaking of the trust and duty of maintaining a uniform and pure metallic standard of uniform value throughout the Union, said: "The power of coining money and regulating its value was delegated to congress by the constitution for the very purpose, as assigned by the framers of that instrument, of creating and preserving the uniformity and purity of such a standard of value."
The present majority of the court say that legal tender notes "have become the universal measure of values," and they hold that the legislation of congress, substituting such measures for coin by making the notes a legal tender in payment, is warranted by the constitution.
But if the plain sense of words, if the contemporaneous exposition of parties, if common consent in understanding, if the opinions of courts avail anything in determine the meaning of the constitution, it seems impossible to doubt that the power to coin money is a power to establish a uniform standard of value, and that no other power to establish such a standard, by making notes a legal tender, is conferred upon congress by the constitution.
My brothers Clifford and Field concur in these views, but in consideration of the importance of the principles involved will deliver their separate opinions. My brother Nelson also dissents.