Gold and silver were used in commerce on the basis of barter—but not on any other.
Neither gold nor silver were coined into legal tender money, until after Rome had become Mistress of the World.
See any standard History of Rome—Mommsen’s for instance; and see, also, Del Mar’s “Money and Civilization.”
(2) Paper money is Constitutional, for the reason that the Constitution, itself, gives to Congress the right to coin legal tender money, and the Supreme Court of the United States, in a case brought to test that very question, decided, in effect, that the word coin, as used in the Constitution, has the sense of “create,” and that Congress can create legal tender money out of paper, if it sees fit to do so.
Congress had seen fit to do so, for the good and sufficient reason that the expenses of the Government had increased to more than a million dollars per day, and there was no specie money in the Treasury.
The Government made money out of paper because it had nothing else to make it out of.
Ground hog case, Doctor.
(3) The facts in the case. The Contracts were payable in coin, just as in France. The option, of payment in silver or in gold, belonged to the Government under the words and in the spirit of the contract.
In France, it was the same. The creditors claimed payment in gold, both in this country and in France.
The French Government calmly bossed the situation as any real Government should, and paid the contracts as it pleased in either “coin.” When the French Government felt like paying gold coin, gold was paid. When the Government felt like paying silver coin, silver was paid.