by issuing its obligations or promises to pay, includes the incidental au thority to make such obligations a legal tender in payment of debts, and thus to modify the obligation of contracts, so far as such modification may result from a legitimate exercise of the power delegated, but no further. The obligation of contracts may, in like manner, be affected by the exercise of many other powers of Congress: as, for example, the power to coin money and regulate its value, and the power over bankruptcies. The incidental authority over contracts, derived from the lat ter power, has been judicially asserted. (5 Hill, 317; 4 Comstock, 276.) This construction, it seems to me, is borne out by the views of the members of the convention which framed the Constitution, expressed in the debates upon the proposition of GOUVERNEUR MORRIS, to strike out of the original draft the words expressly authorizing Congress to emit bills of credit; and also upon the clause which expressly prohibits that power to the States. (Madison Papers.) But the debates in the convention are a somewhat uncertain guide in construing the Constitution. They show that the members of the convention were sometimes disposed to shape the phraseology of the instrument with a reference to the meaning which they supposed the people would attach to it when it should be presented to them for adoption. So that, after all, the inquiry must be, what did the people intend by their grant of power, and that must be determined by the language of the grant. Finally, it is objected that a law impairing the obligation of contracts is against natural justice, and therefore void. If the primary object of the law in question were not within the scope of the powers of Congress, the law would be void for that reason. But its principal object as we have seen is within the power of Congress, and it is therefore valid. If the legislature of the Union shall pass a law within the general scope of their constitutional power, the court cannot pronounce it to be void, merely because it is in their judgment contrary to the principles of natural justice. The ideas of natural justice are regulated by no fixed standard; the ablest and the purest men have differed upon the subject; and all that the court could properly say in such an event, would be that the legis lature (possessed of an equal right of opinion) had passed an act which, in the opinion of the judges, was inconsistent with the abstract principles of natural justice. There are then but two lights in which the subject can be viewed. 1. If the legislature pursue the authority delegated to them, their acts are valid. 2. If they transgress the boundaries of that authority, their acts are invalid. In the former case, they exercise the discretion vested in them by the people, to whom alone they are responsible for the faithful discharge of their trust; but in the latter case, they violate a fundamental law, which must be our guide, whenever we are called upon as judges to determine the validity of a legislative act. (Per IREDELL, J., CALDER vs. BULL, 3 Dallas, 399.) Being satisfied that the act in question is within the power of Con gress which I have considered, I have not examined the other positions taken by counsel on the argument. I think the defendant is entitled to judgment. NOTE.-The recent unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of THE PEOPLE ex rel. BANK OF COMMERCE VS. THE COMMISSIONERS OF TAXATION, establishing the power of Congress to exempt United States securities from State taxation, as an incident of the power to borrow money, sustains in principle the decision in this case, viz., that Congress may make Treasury notes a legal tender as necessary and proper for the purpose of giving to them the credit and currency essential to borrowing money thereon, and to raising and maintaining the immense armies and navies demanded by the emergency. RECENT LAW DECISIONS. CASES in reference to the following subjects, are reported in "The Bankers' Magazine and Statistical Register" for 1862-3: |