To justify its declaration, that congress has power to alter men's
contracts after they are made, the court dwells upon the fact that, at
the times when the legal-tender acts were passed, the government was in
peril of its life; and asserts that it had therefore a right to do
almost anything for its self-preservation, without much regard to its
honesty, or dishonesty, towards private persons. Thus it says:
A civil war was then raging, which seriously threatened the
overthrow of the government, and the destruction of the
constitution itself. It demanded the equipment and support of
large armies and navies, and the employment of money to an
extent beyond the capacity of all ordinary sources of supply.
Meanwhile the public treasury was nearly empty, and the credit
of the government, if not stretched to its utmost tension, had
become nearly exhausted. Moneyed institutions had advanced
largely of their means, and more could not be expected of them.
They had been compelled to suspend specie payments. Taxation
was inadequate to pay even the interest on the debt already
incurred, and it was impossible to await the income of
additional taxes. The necessity was immediate and pressing. The
army was unpaid. There was then due to the soldiers in the
field nearly a score of millions of dollars. The requisitions
from the War and Navy departments for supplies, exceeded fifty
millions, and the current expenditure was over one million per
day.... Foreign credit we had none. We say nothing of the
overhanging paralysis of trade, and business generally, which
threatened loss of confidence in the ability of the government
to maintain its continued existence, and therewith the complete
destruction of all remaining national credit.
It was at such a time, and in such circumstances, that congress
was called upon to devise means to maintaining the army and
navy, for securing the large supplies of money needed, and
indeed for the preservation of the government created by the
constitution. It was at such a time, and in such and emergency,
that the legal-tender acts were passed.--12 _Wallace_ 540-1.
In the same case Bradley said:
Can the poor man's cattle, and horses, and corn be thus taken
by the government, when the public exigency requires it, and
cannot the rich man's bonds and notes be in like manner taken
to reach the same end?--_p._ 561.
He also said:
It is absolutely essential to independent national existence
that government should have a firm hold on the two great
instrumentalities of the _sword_ and the _purse, and the right
to wield them without restriction, on occasions of national
peril_. In certain emergencies government must have at its
command, _not only the personal services--the bodies and
lives--of its citizens_, but the lesser, though not less
essential, power of absolute control over the resources of the
country. Its armies must be filled, and its navies manned, by
the citizens in person.--_p._ 563.
Also he said:
_The conscription may deprive me of liberty, and destroy my
life.... All these are fundamental political conditions on
which life, property, and money are respectively held and
enjoyed under our system of government, nay, under any system
of government._ There are times when the exigencies of the
State rightly absorb all subordinate considerations of private
interest, convenience, and feeling.--_p._ 565.
Such an attempt as this, to justify one crime, by taking for granted the
justice of other and greater crimes, is a rather desperate mode of
reasoning, for a court of law; to say nothing of a court of justice. The
answer to it is, that no government, however good in other respects--any
more than any other good institution--has any right to live otherwise
than on purely voluntary support. It can have no right to take either
"the poor man's cattle, and horses, and corn," or "the rich man's bonds
and notes," or poor men's "bodies and lives," without their consent. And
when a government resorts to such measures to save its life, we need no
further proof that its time to die has come. A good government, no more
than a bad one, has any right to live by robbery, murder, or any other
crime.
But so think not the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
On the contrary, they hold that, in comparison with the preservation of
the government, all the rights of the people to property, liberty, and
life are worthless things, not to be regarded. So they hold that in such
an exigency as they describe, congress had the right to commit any crime
against private persons, by which the government could be saved. And
among these lawful crimes, the court holds that congress had the right
to issue money that should serve as a license to all holders of it, to
cheat--or rather openly rob--their creditors.
The court might, with just as much reason, have said that, to preserve
the life of the government, congress had the right to issue such money
as would authorize all creditors to demand twice the amount of their
honest dues from all debtors.
The court might, with just as much reason, have said that, to preserve
the life of the government, congress had the right to sell indulgences
for all manner of crimes; for theft, robbery, rape, murder, and all
other crimes, for which indulgences would bring a price in the market.
Can any one imagine it possible that, if the government had always done
nothing but that "equal and exact justice to all men"--which you say it
is pledged to do,--but which you must know it has never done,--it could
ever have been brought into any such peril of its life, as these judges
describe? Could it ever have been necessitated to take either "the poor
man's cattle, and horses, and corn," or "the rich man's bonds and
notes," or poor men's "bodies and lives," without their consent? Could
it ever have been necessitated to "conscript" the poor man--too poor to
pay a ransom of three hundred dollars--made thus poor by the tyranny of
the government itself--"deprive him of his liberty, and destroy his
life"? Could it ever have been necessitated to sell indulgences for
crime to either debtors, or creditors, or anybody else? To preserve "the
constitution"--a constitution, I repeat, that authorized nothing but
"equal and exact justice to all men"--could it ever have been
necessitated to send into the field millions of ignorant young men, to
cut the throats of other young men as ignorant as themselves--few of
whom, on either side, had ever read the constitution, or had any real
knowledge of its legal meaning; and not one of whom had ever signed it,
or promised to support it, or was under the least obligation to support
it?
It is, I think, perfectly safe to say, that not one in a thousand,
probably not one in ten thousand, of these young men, who were sent out
to butcher others, and be butchered themselves, had any real knowledge
of the constitution they were professedly sent out to support; or any
reasonable knowledge of the real character and motives of the congresses
and courts that profess to administer the constitution. If they had
possessed this knowledge, how many of them would have ever gone to the
field?
But further. Is it really true that the right of the government to
commit all these atrocities:
_Are the fundamental political conditions on which life,
property, and money are respectively held and enjoyed under our
system of government?_
If such is the real character of the constitution, can any further proof
be required of the necessity that it be buried out of sight at once and
forever? The truth was that the government was in peril, _solely because
it was not fit to exist_. It, and the State governments--all but parts
of one and the same system--were rotten with tyranny and crime. And
being bound together by no honest tie, and existing for no honest
purpose, destruction was the only honest doom to which any of them were
entitled. And if we had spent the same money and blood to destroy them,
that we did to preserve them, it would have been ten thousand times more
creditable to our intelligence and character as a people.
Clearly the court has not strengthened its case at all by this picture
of the peril in which the government was placed. It has only shown to
what desperate straits a government, founded on usurpation and fraud,
and devoted to robbery and oppression, may be brought, by the quarrels
that are liable to arise between the different factions--that is, the
different bands of robbers--of which it is composed. When such quarrels
arise, it is not to be expected that either faction--having never had
any regard to human rights, when acting in concert with the other--will
hesitate at any new crimes that may be necessary to prolong its
existence.
Here was a government that had never had any legitimate existence. It
professedly rested all its authority on a certain paper called a
constitution; a paper, I repeat, that nobody had ever signed, that few
persons had ever read, that the great body of the people had never seen.
This government had been imposed, by a few property holders, upon a
people too poor, too scattered, and many of them too ignorant, to
resist. It had been carried on, for some seventy years, by a mere cabal
of irresponsible men, called lawmakers. In this cabal, the several local
bands of robbers--the slaveholders of the South, the iron monopolists,
the woollen monopolists, and the money monopolists, of the North--were
represented. The whole purpose of its laws was to rob and enslave the
many--both North and South--for the benefit of a few. But these robbers
and tyrants quarreled--as lesser bands of robbers have done--over the
division of their spoils. And hence the war. No such principle as
justice to anybody--black or white--was the ruling motive on either
side.
In this war, each faction--already steeped in crime--plunged into new,
if not greater, crimes. In its desperation, it resolved to destroy men
and money, without limit, and without mercy, for the preservation of its
existence. The northern faction, having more men, money, and credit than
the southern, survived the Kilkenny fight. Neither faction cared
anything for human rights then, and neither of them has shown any regard
for human rights since. "As a war measure," the northern faction found
it necessary to put an end to the one great crime, from which the
southern faction had drawn its wealth. But all other government crimes
have been more rampant since the war, than they were before. Neither the
conquerors, nor the conquered, have yet learned that no government can
have any right to exist for any other purpose than the simple
maintenance of justice between man and man.
And now, years after the fiendish butchery is over, and after men would
seem to have had time to come to their senses, the Supreme Court of the
United States, representing the victorious faction, comes forward with
the declaration that one of the crimes--the violation of men's private
contracts--resorted to by its faction, in the heat of conflict, as a
means of preserving its power over the other, was not only justifiable
and proper at the time, _but that it is also a legitimate and
constitutional power, to be exercised forever hereafter in time of
peace!_
Mark the knavery of these men. They first say that, because the
government was in peril of its life, it had a right to license great
crimes against private persons, if by so doing it could raise money for
its own preservation. Next they say that, _although the government is no
longer in peril of its life_, it may still go on forever licensing the
same crimes as it was before necessitated to license!
They thus virtually say that the government may commit the same crimes
in time of peace, that it is necessitated to do in time of war; and,
that, consequently, it has the same right to "take the poor man's
cattle, and horses, and corn," and "the rich man's bonds and notes," and
poor men's "bodies and lives," in time of peace, _when no necessity
whatever can be alleged_, as in time of war, when the government is in
peril of its life.
In short, they virtually say, that this government exists for itself
alone; and that all the natural rights of the people, to property,
liberty, and life, are mere baubles, to be disposed of, at its pleasure,
whether in time of peace, or in war.