Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1871-05-23
Supreme Court-Legal Tender Act.

~O6~A ACAASr ACl.
We have heard the theory advanc-
ed that courts ought to be as far re-
moved as possible from all popular
influences, either of laudation or
blame, Proceeding upon this theory,
the judges Of the United States
Courts are blessed with a competent
salary which may be increased indef-
initely, but cannot be diminished.
They retain their offices for life,
that is, during good behavior. They
not only lose their dread of popular
reproaoh and criticism, but they be-
come Indifferent and oblivious of the
nations instincts, necessities and
history. There is, perhaps, no body
of officials in the United States, or
even of intelligent private persons,
that is so hopelessly and obstinateIy
ignorant Of the direction in which
the people are moving, drifting or
progressing with the age and times,
as the judges of these courts. They
become dead in law, if not in fact.
Solomon p. Chase was once great
man, but his present dotage and i'm
becility well fit him for the position
Of Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court. In politics they are earnest
disciples OF Petroleum V, Nasty, and
frequent the crossroads.
The bred Scott decision was the
unintelligible and strange jargon of
men belonging to the dead past, and
who were foreign to the age, genera
tlon and questions which then agi-
tated the public mind. In that case
they did not tell us anything new,
but only what we had formerly heard
refuted and forgotten. A majority
of that court sometime ago decided
that Congress, even when the exist
ence and credit Of the nation was in
grave uncertainty, and faith in its
future had we'll nigh vanished, and
when half the North proclaimed the
war a failure, could not make its me-
gotiable paper tender for past debts,
thereby compelling all creditors to
become patriotic in compelling them
TO receive government currency.
All private contracts and rights
must succumb to the necessities Of
national existence. When the gov
eminent is undone, the creditor is al
so ruined, even if he could exact his
gold. No rights created by contract
can be more sacred than the duties
citizen owes to such government as
our own. Although in practice
the influence of the United States
Courts on all great questions in which
they may repeat the ideas of the
past, is becoming less and less yet
we are glad that majority of that
court has assumed and advocated the
only true and safe ground in respect
to our national currency. which was
q necessity of the war. We breathe
freer To adopt the idea of it's TN
constitutionality would render us ut
terly helpless in the face of another
rebellion Of far less magnitude than
the past. Every State Supreme
Court, except that Of Kentucky and
Oregon, had sustained the validity
of the legal tender act with reference
to the past debts. Against this ar
ray of living judicial talent and en-
ergy, Chief Justice Chase and four
OF his associates, had the folly to
protest. The Chief Justice to his
great disgust has been overruled in
his own court. The gold gamb-
lers have been baked Every cred
itor now must sustain the govern
ment whose paper he is compelled to
take. Everybody must rise or fall
with his country. Our greenbacks
will be as good as gold, and far bet
ter for misers will not hoard them
up and cramp the commercial world
with the gold collie, as was done in
1857.