Note 1 — Chapter XII · Getting Sober.

This is the American interpretation. The English interpretation of “legal tender” was brought out in a debate in the House of Lords, in June, 1811, when it was shown to mean, in its application to Great Britain, no more than this: that in a suit between creditor and debtor, if a judgment went against the debtor, he was allowed to plead a tender of bank-notes in arrest of execution, but he could not claim that the notes should be forced upon the creditor in discharge of the debt. During the long suspension of specie payments in Great Britain, therefore, bank-notes were never made legal tender in the American sense.