The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-03-19
AN IHcossEQUEnrIAL QUESTION.

/
| The United States Supreme Court is gradu-
ally stripping the greenbacks OF the conditions
necessary to give practical effect to the legal
tender act. Referring to the decision in the
| case Of Bronson VS.. Rhodes, declaring that
this law has no retroactive application, and
that it does not invalidate gold contracts, the
New York Tribune says 1--WE have little
doubt that this decision foreshadows an ulti-
mate determination that the entire legal ten
der provision is unconstitutional. Indeed, we
think that the Supreme Court is seeking. by
this and similar decisions, to prepare the
country for its final disposition of the whole
subject And prudent men will hasten to
put their business upon such footing as will
enable them to meet such decision" In
our opinion, the question can be of no practi-
cal consequence as regards future transactions
of business. It is not to be supposed that
debts now contracted on the basis of depre-
ciated paper currency would be enforced by
the Judiciary to the full collection of their
face in gold. The same equity that forbids
the retroactive operation of the legal tender
act, would forbid the like operation of a de-
cision pronouncing the act unconstitutional
Gold would remain the only legal tender, it
is true, but the amount of gold equitably ext
gible for the payment of a debt estimated in
greenbacks, would be less than this estimate
to the extent of the depreciation of those
notes below the par of gold at the time the
debt was contracted. No proposition could
be clearer than this. To discuss it contra
dictorily would be as preposterous as to argue
about the multiplication table, or addition
and subtraction. If, then, principles of equi-
ty are to govern hereafter in adjusting the
relations of debtor and creditor, these rela-
tons cannot be seriously affected by the ulti-
mate declaration by the Supreme Court of the
unconstitutionality of the legal tender act.
Some of our contemporaries have wasted
good deal of speculation as to the manner
and the measure in which future transactions
of business would be affected by the two deci-
gions of the Supreme Court affirming the
principle that the greenback dollar was not, in
fact or in legal intent, the equivalent of the
had already decreed that greenbacks should
be legal tender only to the extent of their
market value and no legislative ingenuity or
rigor, nothing, indeed, short of downright
plumber of property and the humiliation Of
commerce, could have nullifed this decree.
Greenbacks had no real value impaired to
them by the legal tender provision they
would lose nothing in point of real value if
that provision we're repealed by Congressional
enactment or judicial decision. As one of
the forms of the national debt their current
price throughout has been measured by the
market value of the national credit; aud in
the nature of things it must continue to be
thus measured whether the legal tender pro-
vision shall fall or stand. Deprived of its
retroactive quality, it is simply a Legislative
SPECIFICATION, and it is immaterial whether
the judiciary shall hereafter pronounce it
dead OF alive. The apprehension that green .
backs would cease to be available for buying
and selling purposes, although needed by the
business of the country, if their legal tender
faculty were destroyed by the Supreme Court,
is altogether fallacious. There is no reason
why, in such case. they should not still be
taken in trade, as they are now taken-if
needed. Their discount would be no greater
il taken from their face, instead of being
added to the prices of commodities which
they should be used to purchase. But if no
longer needed as currency. they would, of
course, pass out of circulation and be resolved
into the mass of the national debt, rising or
sailing in value according to the fluctuations
of the national credit.