Objections: Legal and Practical, to Our National Currency System

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G.B. Reed, 1893 - Currency question - 56 pages
 

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Page 55 - Treasury notes, and national bank bills, and the power to make the notes of the government a legal tender in payment of private debts being one of the powers belonging to sovereignty in other civilized nations, and not expressly withheld from Congress by the Constitution, we are irresistibly impelled to the conclusion that the impressing upon the Tre-asury notes of the United States...
Page 6 - The United States in congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective states..
Page 7 - There can hardly be a better rule in any country, for the legal, than the market proportion, if this can be supposed to have been produced by the free and steady course of commercial principles. The presumption, in such case, is, that each metal finds its true level, according to its intrinsic utility, in the general system of money operations.
Page 27 - ... the established policy of the United States to maintain the two metals on a parity with each other upon the present legal ratio, or such ratio as may be provided by law.
Page 17 - States are expressly prohibited from making any thing 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...
Page 16 - 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 own mints, or foreign coins, at rates regulated by Congress. This is a constitutional principle perfectly plain, and of the very highest importance.
Page 55 - to coin money and regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin;" and being clearly authorized, as incidental to the exercise of those great powers, to emit bills of credit, to charter national banks, and to provide a national currency for the whole people, in the form of coin, treasury notes, and national bank bills; and the power to make the notes of the government a legal tender in payment...
Page 33 - However this may be, it is too clear to be reasonably disputed, that Congress, under its constitutional power to lay taxes, to regulate commerce, and to regulate the value of coin, possesses ample authority to control the credit circulation which enters so largely into the transactions of commerce, and affects in so many ways the value of coin.
Page 20 - I am not a believer in any artificial method of making paper money equal to coin when coin is not owned or held ready to redeem the promises to pay ; for paper money is nothing more than promises to pay, and is valuable exactly in proportion to the amount of coin that it can be converted into.
Page 4 - And be it further enacted, That the said corporation shall not at any time suspend or refuse payment in gold and silver, of any of its...

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