Never Can We See

Excerpt from an argument before supreme court, 1870

'The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences in cases affecting personal rights became jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more industrious and less-informed part of the community. They have seen, too, that one legislative interference is but the first link in a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally provoked by the effects of the preceding. They very rightly infer, therefore, that some thorough reform is wanting, which will banish speculations on public measures, inspire a general prudence and industry, and give a regular course to the business of society.'...When the wicked prosper, other men make haste to do likewise. And now, not from the cities only, but from every part, men seek the great marts to try their fortune in the ventures of the hour, hoping to gather where they have not strewn. Gambling in stocks, with the dangerous combinations it invites, and the corruption which it encourages, has become general; so that it is deemed venial to artificially inflate or depress prices, to create fictitious values by forced scarceness, or undue depression by combined attacks. And whatever danger may come to the public debt of this great country, will come, not from the recklessness of a people carrying out their schemes upon the waves of an inflated currency, and from the demoralization which such speculations

produces. How can it be expected that this people will make the sacrifices necessary to enable their government to keep its pledged faith, when it has not only failed to keep its own faith with its creditors, but has filled its coffers from the sale of licenses to men to wrong each other by short payments, and has made haste to ratify, by the decision of its supreme tribunal, the constitutionality and righteousness of such a course?

this was excerpted from Benjamin F.Butler arguing for plaintiff in Parker v.Davis, in what became a consolidated case and has come to us as “the Legal Tender Cases.”

As a matter of record, the court of the time did not accept the argument presented above.