Note 4 — Chapter XI · The New Millennium.

But the thing which the philosophers relied on more than any thing else to sustain their views before the people was a judicial decision recently made in a neighboring country, by its highest court, before whom the question as to what constituted money was officially brought for determination. This decision, expressed in the very peculiar language of the country, was as follows: “What we do assert is, that Congress has power to enact that the Government promises to pay money shall be, for the time being, equivalent in value to the representative of value determined by the coinage acts, or to multiples thereof.” All of which, translated into the language of the island, meant that Government has the power to make a promise to pay, containing an acknowledgment in itself that the promise has not been paid, a full satisfaction that the promise has been paid. That this decision, furthermore, covered no new points of law, was indirectly conceded by the learned judges, inasmuch as, in giving their opinions, they cited, as precedents worthy of being ever remembered, the decisions of that eminent old-time jurist, Cade (Jack), who ordained that “seven half-penny loaves should be sold for a penny;” and that “the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops.” The same court also strengthened its position by saying that “it is hardly correct to speak of a standard of value. The Constitution does not speak of it. Value is an ideal thing. The coinage acts fix its unit as a dollar; but the gold and silver thing we call a dollar is in no sense the standard of a dollar. It is a representative of it. There might never have been a piece of money of the denomination of a dollar.”4