The States had struggled together,
but their union was imperfect. They had freedom, but not an established
course of justice. The Constitution was therefore framed, as it
professes, "to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to
secure the blessings of liberty, and to insure domestic tranquillity."
It is not pertinent to this occasion to advert to all the means by which
these desirable ends were to be obtained. Some of them, closely
connected with the subject now under consideration, are obvious and
prominent. The objects were commerce, credit, and mutual confidence in
matters of property; and these required, among other things, a uniform
standard of value or medium of payments. One of the first powers given
to Congress, therefore, is that of coining money and fixing the value of
foreign coins; and one of the first restraints imposed on the States is
the total prohibition to coin money. These two provisions are
industriously followed up and completed by denying to the States all
power to emit bills of credit, or to make any thing but gold and silver
a tender in the payment of debts. The whole control, therefore, over the
standard of value and medium of payments is vested in the general
government. And here the question instantly suggests itself. Why should
such pains be taken to confide to Congress alone this exclusive power of
fixing on a standard of value, and of prescribing the medium in which
debts shall be paid, if it is, after all, to be left to every State to
declare that debts may be discharged, and to prescribe how they may be
discharged, without any payment at all? Why say that no man shall be
obliged to take, in discharge of a debt, paper money issued by the
authority of a State, and yet say that by the same authority the debt
may be discharged without any payment whatever?
We contend, that the Constitution has not left its work thus unfinished.
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