16 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Are you aware of what our supreme court has done about 

 the matter? In the spring of 1870 the question came before 

 the court as to the constitutionality of the legal-tender act in 

 its application to debts contracted before its passage. The 

 supreme court decided, as any honest body must, that it was 

 not applicable in such cases. Contracts made when gold was 

 the legal currency should be paid in gold. Any honest eye 

 can see that this is plain justice and law, and so it was decided 

 by a majority of four to three. But what was now the action 

 of our wise law-makers at Washington thereupon? There 

 were prodigious interests at stake. All of our great railroad 

 corporations, by this decision, had got to pay their bonds in 

 gold. So Congress passes an act increasing the number of 

 the supreme court judges from seven to nine. General Grant 

 appoints to fill the two places thus made a judge who, in an 

 inferior court, had already pronounced an opposite decision 

 to the above, and a man who was the paid attorney of the 

 Pennsylvania Central Railroad. Then followed a reversion 

 of the decision of the supreme court, by a majority of five to 

 four, to the effect that the act was constitutional, and this is 

 the way we stand now. Somebody says, "How could we 

 have got along in the war without issuing paper money?" 

 There was an offer by a German banking-house to furnish all 

 the money wanted at five per cent, interest, payable forty 

 years hence. But Congress ignored this ; forty years was 

 too long to wait for the privilege of payment. Moreover, it 

 said, this is a foreign investment ; we must keep our bonds at 

 home. Not let our bonds go abroad? How is Congress 

 going to help it? These same German capitalists came over 

 and bought these bonds, and have got one thousand millions 

 of them now, and we have got to pay the interest to them. 

 Europeans have got five hundred millions more of state bonds, 

 municipal bonds, etc. ; that is, we have got fifteen hundred 

 millions of bonds held in Europe that we are bound to pay 

 gold for. But our Congress would not borrow money of these 

 German capitalists. Another fact : one would suppose that, 

 if a government has not got money enough, it should borrow 

 money in the market. "But," said one Congressman, "would 

 you have the great government of the United States go shin- 

 ning about Wall Street selling bonds?" Well, the issue of 



