Legal Essays Author:James Bradley Thayer General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1908 Original Publisher: The Boston Book Company Subjects: Law Law / General Law / Constitutional Law / Jurisprudence Law / Legal History Law / Legal Profession Law / Legal Writing Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustra... more »tions and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: LEGAL TENDER [This artiele was written in 1887 for one of the eariiest numbers of the Harvard Law Review (1 Harv. Law Rev. 73). l The question whether Congress has the power to make paper a good tender in payment of debts, and the question whether under any given circumstances it is wise or right that Congress should use it, are very different things. He who asserts the power may well enough deny the wisdom, the justice, or the morality of any particular instance of its exercise; recalling what Sir Matthew Hale said of the king's prerogative regarding, the coin: " lt is true that the imbasing of money in point of allay hath not been very usually practised in England, and it would be a dishonor to the nation if it should . . . but surely if we respect the right of the thing, it is within the king's power to do it." 1 The topic which it is now proposed to consider is the purely legal one of constitutional power. l. As regards the clauses of the Constitution relating to money, and as to the opinion of the framers of it about the emission of bills and making paper a legal tender. The specifications of the power which is given to the Congress of the United States in the Constitution, relating to money, are two: power is given to borrow money and to coin money. Art. l., Sec. 8, clause 2, reads: (The Congress shall have power) " to borrow money on the credit of the United States." ln clause 5 the power is given " to coin money...« less