the difficulty of defence; nay, they are to be encouraged to it by an assurance of having their votes in the national government increased in proportion; and are, at the same time, to have their exports and their slaves exempt from all contributions for the public service. I will sooner submit myself to a tax for paying for all the negroes in the United States than saddle posterity with such a constitution."* Dayton seconded the motion, that his sentiments on the subject might appear, whatever might be the fate of the amendment.† Charles Pinckney "considered the fisheries and the western frontier as more burdensome to the United States than the slaves." + Wilson thought an agreement to the clause would be no bar to the object of the motion, which itself was premature. New Jersey voted aye, ten states in the negative. So ended the skirmish preliminary to the struggle on the continuance of the slave-trade. Great as was the advance from the articles of the confederacy, the new grants, not less than the old ones, of power to the legislature of the United States to lay taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, and collect them; to regulate foreign and domestic commerce; alone to coin money and regulate the value of foreign coin; to fix the standard of weights and measures; and establish post-offices, were accepted on the sixteenth, with little difference of opinion.# No one disputed the necessity of clothing the United States with power " to borrow money." The committee of detail added a continuance of the permission "to emit bills on the credit of the United States." Four years before, Hamilton, in his careful enumeration of the defects in the confederation, pronounced that this authority "to emit an unfunded paper as the sign of value ought not to continue a formal part of the constitution, nor ever, hereafter, to be employed; being, in its nature, pregnant with abuses, and liable to be made the engine of imposition and fraud; holding out temptations equally pernicious to the integrity of government and to the morals of the people." A * Gilpin, 1263-1265; Elliot, 392, 393. # Gilpin, 1343; Elliot, 484. Gouverneur Morris on the fifteenth recited the history of paper emissions and the perseverance of the legislative assemblies in repeating them, though well aware of all their distressing effects, and drew the inference that, were the national legislature formed and a war to break out, this ruinous expedient, if not guarded against, would be again resorted to.* On the sixteenth he moved to strike out the power to emit bills on the credit of the United States. "If the United States," said he, "have credit, such bills will be unnecessary; if they have not, they will be unjust and useless." + Butler was urgent for disarming the government of such a power, and seconded the motion. It obtained the acquiescence of Madison. Mason of Virginia " 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. The late war could not have been carried on had such a prohibition existed." # "The power," said Gorham, " as far as it will be necessary or safe, is involved in that of borrowing money." Mercer of Maryland was unwilling to deny to the government a discretion on this point; besides, he held it impolitic to excite the opposition to the constitution of all those who, like himself, were friends to paper money.A "This," said Ellsworth, "is a favorable moment to shut and bar the door against paper money, which can in no case be necessary. The power may do harm, never good. Give the government credit, and other resources will offer."◊ Randolph, notwithstanding his antipathy to paper money, could not foresee all the occasions that might arise.↓ "Paper money," said Wilson, "can never succeed while its mischiefs are remembered; and, as long as it can be resorted to, it will be a bar to other resources." "Rather than give the power," said John Langdon of New Hampshire, “I would reject the whole plan." ↑ With the full recollection of the need, or seeming need, of paper money in the revolution, with the menace of danger in future time of war from its prohibition, authority to issue bills of credit that should be legal-tender was refused to the general government by the vote of nine states against New Jersey and Maryland. It was Madison who decided the vote of Virginia; and he has left his testimony that "the pretext for a paper currency, and particularly for making the bills a tender, either for public or private debts, was cut off." This is the interpretation of the clause, made at the time of its adoption alike by its authors and by its opponents,* accepted by all the statesmen of that age, not open to dispute because too clear for argument, and never disputed so long as any one man who took part in framing the constitution remained alive. History can not name a man who has gained enduring honor by causing the issue of paper money. Wherever such * For Madison's narrative and opinion, see Gilpin, 1344–1346, and note on 1346; Elliot, 434, 435. The accuracy of the historical sketch of Luther Martin, officially addressed, 27 January 1788, to the speaker of the house of delegates of Maryland, has in ninety-six years never been questioned. It may be found in Elliot, i., 369, 370, and is as follows: "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; agrecable to which was the report on this system as made by the committee 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 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 will ing blindly to trust the liberty and property of the citizens of every state in the union; and they erased that clause from the system." With regard to the paper money issued during the late civil war, congress healed the difficulty by obtaining, in the fourteenth amendment, from the whole country what may be regarded as an act of indemnity; and, while the country made itself responsible for the debt which was contracted, the amendment preserved the original clause of the constitution in its full integrity and vigor. paper has been employed, it has in every case thrown upon its authors the burden of exculpation under the plea of pressing necessity. Paper money has no hold, and from its very nature can acquire no hold, on the conscience or affections of the people. It impairs all certainty of possession, and taxes none so heavily as the class who earn their scant possession by daily labor. It injures the husbandman by a twofold diminution of the exchangeable value of his harvest. It is the favorite of those who seek gain without willingness to toil; it is the deadly foe of industry. No powerful political party ever permanently rested for support on the theory that it is wise and right. No statesman has been thought well of by his kind in a succeeding generation for having been its promoter. * In the plan of government, concerted between the members from Connecticut, especially Sherman and Ellsworth, there was this further article: "That the legislatures of the individual states ought not to possess a right to emit bills of credit for a currency, or to make any tender laws for the payment or discharge of debts or contracts in any manner different from the agreement of the parties, or in any manner to obstruct or impede the recovery of debts, whereby the interests of foreigners or the citizens of any other state may be affected."+ The committee of detail had reported: "No state, without the consent of the legislature of the United States, shall emit bills of credit. With a nobler and safer trust in the power of truth and right over opinion, Sherman on the twenty-eighth, scorning compromise, cried out: "This is the favorable crisis for crushing paper money," and, joining Wilson, they two proposed to make the prohibition absolute. Gorham feared that ston. *This paragraph is a very feeble abstract of the avowed convictions of the great statesmen and jurists who made the constitution. Their words are homely and direct condemnation; and they come not from one party. Richard Henry Lee is as strong in his denunciation as Washington, Sherman, or Robert R. LivingWilliam Paterson of New Jersey wrote in 1786 as follows: "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 tricks; will turn vice into a legal virtue; and sanctify iniquity by law," etc.-From the holograph of William Paterson. Sherman's Life, in Biography of the Signers, ii., 43. the absolute prohibition would rouse the most desperate opposition; but four northern states and four southern states, Maryland being divided, New Jersey absent, and Virginia alone in the negative, placed in the constitution these unequivocal words: "No state shall emit bills of credit." The second part of the clause, "No state shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts," was accepted without a dissentient state. So the adoption of the constitution is to be the end forever of paper money, whether issued by the several states or by the United states, if the constitution shall be rightly interpreted and honestly obeyed. It was ever the wish of Sherman and Ellsworth to prohibit "the discharge of debts or contracts in any manner different from the agreement of the parties." Among the aggressions made by the states on the rights of other states, Madison, in his enumeration,* names the enforced payment of debts in paper money, the enforced discharge of debts by the conveyance of land or other property, the instalment of debts, and the "occlusion" of courts. For the last two of these wrongs no remedy was as yet provided. King moved to add, as in the ordinance of congress for the establishment of new states, "a prohibition on the states to interfere in private contracts." "This would be going too far," interposed Gouverneur Morris. "There are a thousand laws relating to bringing actions, limitations of actions, and the like, which affect contracts. The judicial power of the United States will be a protection in cases within their jurisdiction; within the state itself a majority must rule, whatever may be the mischief done among themselves." "Why, then, prohibit bills of credit?" inquired Sherman. Wilson was in favor of King's motion. Madison admitted that inconveniences might arise from such a prohibition, but thought on the whole its utility would overbalance them. He conceived, however, that a negative on the state laws could alone secure the end. Evasions might and would be devised by the ingenuity of legislatures.# His colleague Mason replied: "The motion" of King "is carrying the restraint too far. Cases will + Ibid. * Madison, i., 321. Gilpin, 1443; Elliot, 485. VOL. VI.-20 #Ibid. |