258 



been in effect upon a gold basis, and as payment in gold i-; therefore, 

 either expressly or impliedly one of the terms of every contract for the 

 payment of money, the remonelization of silver, it may well be claimed, 

 ■would be a robbery of the creditor, and, therefore, unless accompanied 

 with other provisions of the law obviating injustice, an illegitimate exor- 

 cise of governmental functions. Hence, to prevent injustice from the re- 

 sumption of the free coinage of silver at the old ratio, it would be neces- 

 sary for the government to redeem all outstanding currency, gold, silver 

 and paper, at its value in gold, and for the law to provide for the pay- 

 ment of all existing debts public and private in gold coin. To the justice 

 of this course neither party could make just objection ; not, the gold men ; 

 for contracts would be paid according their tenor ; nor the silver men ; 

 for it is claimed by them, and I think justly, that gold would be depre- 

 ciated. This would be a great, but not impracticable undertaking ; and 

 perhaps in view of the disastrous effects of the demonetization of silver, 

 and of the absolute necessity of a remedy, it might be also advisable, (/t) 



NOTES. 



(a) "Man, born in a family, is compelled to maintain society, from necessity, from 

 mutual inclination and from habit. The same creature, in his further progress, is 

 engaged to establish political society, in order to administer justice, without which there 

 can be no peace among them, nor safety, nor mutual intercourse. We are therefore to look 

 upon all the vast apparatus of our government as having ultimately no other object or 

 purpose but the distribution of justice, or, in other words, the support of the twelve 

 judges. Kings and parliaments, fleets and armies, officers of the court and revenue, 

 ambassadors, ministers and privy counselors, are all subordinate in their end to this part 

 of administration " (Hume's Essays). 



( b) The origin of this, the laissez alter theory, is ascribed by Mr. Ahrens to Kant, to whom 

 bethinks the reaction from the theory of Wolf is due. "Thenceforth," he says, "the 

 State was conceived as an institution, not for eternal or temporal salvation, but for right, 

 guaranteeing to all liberty, and nothing but liberty, which each was to use consistently 

 with the liberty of all, and according to the moral views freely formed in his own con- 

 science. The theory of Kant upon the end of the State thus conducted to the fir.st con- 

 ception of the State as an institution, or Stcite of right {Hat de droit, rechts-staat), wliich 

 England has, in great pan, realized in practice, which Adam Smith, with whom Kant 

 has been paralleled, has established from the point of view of the liberty of labor, and 

 Avhich the United States have realized still more completely in all their Constitution. 

 NeverXhelcss, the theory of Kant went beyond all reality. For even the United States, 

 where the particular States take so great a care of public instruction, have not gone so 

 far in the limitation of the action of the State. The theory of Kant did not respond 

 sufficiently to practical exigencies, and it was also recognized, from the jihilosophic 

 point of view, as an exclusive, abstract theory, leaving out of view all the ends of man 

 with which right ought to be put in relation. To remedy this great defect attempts were 

 made to combine the two opposed theories of right, and of happiness, or, rather of the 

 common good, by presenting right as the primary, or direct, immediate end, and the 

 common good, on the contrary, as the secondary or indirect end, yet without determining 

 precisely the relation of the one as the mean, with the other as the final end" {Cuurs de 

 Droit Naturel, Sec. 106). 



(c) I quote Prof. Sumner from memory. The fact is there has never, in any modern 

 government, been even an approximation to the laissez /aire doctrine, and no argument 



