Court Opinion

ID: 9417720
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 20:33:14.011222+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:48.808717
License: Public Domain

Mb. Justice Field
concurring.
I have also some observations to make upon this litigation. The case comes before us on error to the Supreme Court of the State of Mississippi. The complainants below, the plaintiffs in error here, commenced a' suit in the Chancery Court of Hinds County, in that State, to enforce a trust and a lien upon certain lands therein, as holders of bonds of the levee board of the State, district No. 1, by an act of the legislature of March 17, 1871, under which the bonds were issued. The bill of complaint alleged that Amos Woodruff, trustee, the German Bank of Memphig, Tennessee, and B. Richmond were owners and holders of a large number of bonds issued by the levee board of the State of Mississippi, district No. 1, and that the bonds were issued and negotiated by the board under the act entitled “ An act to redeem and protect from overflow from the river Mississippi certain lands described, approved March 17, 1871.” • The language of the statute authorizing the issue of the bonds is as follows:
“ Sec. 9. Be it further enacted, That for the purposes afore-aid, and to enable them to carry out the purposes of this act, the said board of levee commissioners shall have power to borrow money, and to that end may issue the bonds of said board to the amount of one million of dollars, in such sums and denominations, not less than one hundred dollars each, as the said board may prescribe; which bonds shall be signed by the *305president and countersigned by the treasurer of said board, and be made payable to order or bearer, in not less than two nor more than ten years after the first day of January, 1871, and shall bear a rate of interest not exceeding eight per cent per annum, for which, interest coupons may be attached, payable at such time and place as the board may contract. Said bonds shall be negotiated as promissory notes or bills of exchange, and' may be sold and negotiated in any market in or out of the State, on the best terms that can be obtained for the same; but in no case shall any of them be negotiated or sold at a greater discount than ten per cent.”
By the act, as stated in the. bill, a special tax was levied upon all the lands in said district protected by the levees to be ' built by the board, and provision was made for its collection.
By section 10 of the act, as also stated in the bill, it was provided “ that the charges and assessments, fixed, levied and made as aforesaid, by the act, should be, as .they were from time to time collected, and they were thereby constituted a special fund and trust, to be used by said board; first, in the payment of any bonds that might be sold or used as before provided under the act, and of money that might be borrowed udder its provisions; secondly, for the payment of any other debts or liabilities of said board, and when collected the same should be paid into the treasury of said board for the purposes aforesaid.”
Under this statute the board of levee commissioners, as stated in the bill, was organized, and issued a large number of bonds, aggregating in amount six hundred thousand dollars, and payable to bearer. The bonds recited the act under which they were issued, and ■ expressly stipulated that the interest coupons attached were payable in the currency of the United States, but the principal of the bonds was payable in gold coin.
The bill was exhibited by complainants as. owners and holders of a large number of bonds thus issued and negotiated. It alleged that the act of the legislature referred to imposed a specific tax in rem .on each acre of land (with few exceptions) lying in the levee district No. 1, in order to pay the *306bonds and coupons; that a large amount of the lands were sold under' the act for the delinquent taxes in the year 1872 and the succeeding years, until 1876, and in default of buyers, were struck off to the treasurer of the levee board and duly conveyed to him as such. That from 1876 to 1883 there were no sales to the treasurer, but all lands sold as delinquent were struck off for the state, county and district No. 1 levee taxes to the State of Mississippi, and conveyed to it by one deed. That the State of Mississippi, in 1876, abolished the levee board of district No. 1 as constituted, and made the state auditor and treasurer ex officio 'levee commissioners its successors, and vested the titles of all lands held by the'levee board in them to be administered by them. The bill alleged further that all such lands were held .by the State in trust for the bondholders under the act of March 17, 1871.
The bill asked that the trustees, who administered the trust and who had not yet accounted, should be required to discover the status of the {rust estate, and how it-was administered by them, and that upon'such discovery relief be granted by enforcing the trust; that the sales and conveyances made .by the trustees in violation of the trust be declared void, and that such purchasers be held to an account of the trust estate so far as it had come into their hands, and that the lands be subjected to the tax chargeable against them under the act of 1871, and .the tax be held as a special fund to pay the bonds held by the complainants and others.
The defendants' demurred to the bill upon the ground, among other reasons assigned, that the act of the levee board in making the bonds payable “ in gold coin ” was ultra vires, and the bonds therefor invalid.
The demurrer was sustained, and the complainants appealed.
I cannot concur in the decision of that coui’t. In my judgment no transaction of commerce or business, or obligation for the payment of money that is not immoral in its character and which is not, in its manifest purpose, detrimental to the peace, good order and general interest of society, can be declared or held to be invalid because enforced or made payable in gold coin or currency when that is established or recognized *307-by the government. And any acts by state authority impairing or lessening the validity or negotiability of obligations thus made payable in gold coin are violative of the laws and Constitution of the United States.
Upon this subject I will presume to cite some of the expressions of Justices of this court, as to the effect of such obligations, used when questions respecting the currency of the country were under consideration in what are known as the legal tender cases.
In speaking of the views of the framers of the Constitution, on the subject of money, it was said that “ at that time gold and silver moulded into forms convenient for use, and.stamped with their value by public authority, constituted, with the exception of pieces of copper for small values, the money of the entire civilized world. It was added that these metals divided up and thus stamped always have constituted money with all people having any civilization, from the earliest periods in the history of the world down to the present time. It was with ‘ four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant,’ that Abraham bought the field of Machpelah, nearly four thousand years ago. This adoption of the precious metals as the subject of coinage, the material of money by all peoples in all ages of the world, as further stated, had not been the result of any vagaries of fancy, but was attributable to the fact that they of all metals alone possessed the properties which are essential to a circulating medium of uniform value.”
“The circulating medium of a commercial community,” said Mr. Webster, “must be that which is also the circulating medium of other commercial communities, or must be capable of being converted into that medium without loss. It must also be able not only to pass in payments and receipts among individuals of the same society and, nation, but to adjust and discharge the balance of .exchanges between different nations. It. must be something which has a value abroad as well as at ■home, by which foreign as well as domestic debts can be satisfied. The precious metals alone answer these purposes. They alone, therefore, are money, and whatever else is to perform the functions of money must be their representative and capa*308ble of being turned into them at will. So long as bank paper retains this quality it is a substitute for money. Divested of this nothing can give it that character.” 3 Webster’s Works, 41.
In accordance with the doctrine thus expressed, I am of opinion, as stated, that no commercial or money transaction, not immoral in its character or detrimental to the general interests of society, can be held or declared to be invalid because it is enforced or made payable in gold coin or currency established or recognized by the government; and, therefore, that the judgment of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, declaring that the bonds of the levee board made payable in gold coin were, for that reason, invalid, cannot be sustained, and that its judgment to that effect should be reversed.