Tender laws contradict the very first principles of contract. Let us examine this matter a little more fully. Money is the medium of commercial transactions.
Money is itself a commodity.
Therefore every transaction in which money is concerned, by being given or promised, is strictly and properly speaking a bargain, or as it is well called in some language, an agreement. To give, therefore, authority or nominal value by law to any money, is interposing by law in commerce, and is precisely the same thing which, in their full extent, we had sufficient experience during the war. Now nothing can be more radically unjust, or more imminently absurd, than laws of that nature. Among all civilians, the transactions of commerce are ranged under the head of contracts. Without entering into the nicer distinctions of writers upon this subject, it is sufficient for me to say, that commerce, or buying and selling, is founded upon that species of contracts that is most formal and complete.