Future Paper Money of This Country [pp. 1-25]

FUTURE PAPER MONEY OF THIS COUN TRY.
while under the concurrent but predominating influence of a
great overshadowing United States Bank. Of course, it is only
in their relations to paper money, as banks of issue, that we
have any present call or space to look into them.
The States early began to assume the prerogative of char tering banks, not only of discount and deposit, but of issues
thus, in addition to other benefits, giving them the inducement
arising from the profits, to furnish the people with the conven ience, of paper money. It has been a question whether, under
the provisions of the U. S. Constitution giving Congress the
power "to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of for eign coin," and forbidding any State "to coin money, emit bills
of credit, make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in
payment of debts," the States have the power of indirectly
emitting such bills of credit, through the institutions they char ter and authorize to emit them, for the purpose of being used
as money, and performing every ordinary function that the
coining of money would perform. We think this would be an
open question now among jurists, had it not been decided affirmatively by the U.S. Supreme Court; and that it would bear reconsideration quite as well, if not somewhat betters than the first
decision of that court denying the constitutionality of the irredeemable U. S. legal-tender notes. It is a curious commentary
on this, however, that the general government in establishing the
national-bank-note circulation extinguished the power to issue
circulating notes which the Supreme Court had affirmed to be
lodged in the States by the Constitution, by imposing a Io-percent tax upon it-a sufficient evidence that it would be dangerous to allow the States to tax government debentures of whatever kind; that even if the States have power to authorize
banks to issue paper money ad libitum, when the national government has the will, it can find a way to stop it. A question
might arise here too as to the legitimacy of imposing taxes for
such purposes.
However this may be, we have no doubt of the expediency
of preventing issues of money, paper or metallic, by the States,
or by their agents and institutions, and of putting upon whatever is allowed to pass with the imprimatur of public authority,
as money, the stamp of national authority. If the prohibition
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