The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-02-16

The Supreme Court of the United States
has recently made an important decision.
The Legislature of Oregon, in laws levying
State taxes, provided that the taxes should be
paid In coin. Certain taxpayers rendered
greenbacks In payment, and pleaded that the
legal tender act made payment in greenbacks a
liquidation of call debts, public and private,
except duties on imports and interest on the
public debt" Of the United States. The
courts of Oregon sustained the State law, and
the case came up on appeal to the Supreme
Court in Washington.
Its decision is to the effect that the act
making greenbacks "legal tender for all
debts, public and private" does not make
them legal tender for any payment that is not
debt Taxes levied by State are not in
cluded in the legal meaning of the word debt,
as the obligation to pay taxes rests on an en-
tirely different ground from the obligation to
pay sums due by contract; and the laws under
which the one class of obligations are created
and enforced are wholly distinct from those
which apply to the other class of obligations.
The right of State to collect taxes in coin is
therefore sustained.
The New York Evening Post contends that
the result of this decision is to destroy utterly
the Pendleton doctrine of payment of the FIVE
twenty bonds in greenbacks, because, saws
the Post bonds are redeemable at the pleasure
OF the United States after five years, but paw
aoie only at the expiration of twenty years
from their date. They become debt only |
after twenty years; and since greenbacks are |
decided to be legal tenders only for that which |
is strictly debt, and not for other oblipa-
tons, they are not legal tender from the
United States for the payment of any obligs-
ton which is only redeemable and not vet
payable, such as the fve-twenty bonds.
But this is not by any means a
legitimate deduction from the decision.
nasmuch as the quality of legal tender
elates not to the transactions of the gov
rnment with its creditors, but to the COM
nunity In general in the relations of its mem.
'ers with each other. The government itself
lscriminates by making that which is legal
ender' In all private transactions, receivable
y the government in payment of only
ertain classes of dues. The question ,
etween the bondholders and the govern
lent is to be decided upon its general
lerits, and not with reference to the techni-
alties of the legal tender act. But one yery
Important consequence does flow, logically
ON this decision, and it is a consequence
hich bears directly on the solution of ques-
ons which have been much discussed in this =
The Supreme Court of the d
nited States holds that taxes levied by a &
late are not debt, and are not included in :
e legal meaning Of the word debt, and this ID
'ctrine applies likewise to taxes levied bv b
unicipal corporations. Hence the notes of
ch corporations instance, New Orleans N
" notes-cannot be forced upon the city in o.
yment OF taxes, on the theory that debt d
10 6y the city may be pleaded in compensa. 81 81
N OF debt due to the city. Under the u.
asonlng of the Supreme Court those persons hi
10 have thought of resisting the collection 10
city taxes in greenbacks would be pretty &C
re to lose their cause, to say nothing of
Fir time and money. ca ca
Al