As if to place beyond controversy the fact, that the court may forever hereafter be relied on to sanction every usurpation and crime that congress will ever dare to put into the form of a statute, without the slightest color of authority from the constitution, necessity, utility, justice, or reason, it has, on three separate occasions, announced its sanction of the monopoly of money, as finally established by congress in 1866, and continued in force ever since. This monopoly is established by a prohibitory tax--a tax of ten per cent.--on all notes issued for circulation as money, other than the notes of the United States and the national banks. This ten per cent. is called a "tax," but is really a penalty, and is intended as such, and as nothing else. Its whole purpose is--_not to raise revenue_--but solely to establish a monopoly of money, by prohibiting the issue of all notes intended for circulation as money, except those issued, or specially licensed, by the government itself. This prohibition upon the issue of all notes, except those issued, or specially licensed, by the government, is a prohibition upon all freedom of industry and traffic. It is a prohibition upon the exercise of men's natural right to lend and hire such money capital as all men need to enable them to create and distribute wealth, and supply their own wants, and provide for their own happiness. Its whole purpose is to reduce, as far as possible, the great body of the people to the condition of servants to a few--a condition but a single grade above that of chattel slavery--in which their labor, and the products of their labor, may be extorted from them at such prices only as the holders of the monopoly may choose to give. This prohibitory tax--so-called--is therefore really a penalty imposed upon the exercise of men's natural right to create and distribute wealth, and provide for their own and each other's wants. And it is imposed solely for the purpose of establishing a practically omnipotent monopoly in the hands of a few. Calling this penalty a "tax" is one of the dirty tricks, or rather downright lies--that of calling things by false names--to which congress and the courts resort, to hide their usurpations and crimes from the common eye. Everybody--who believes in the government--says, of course, that congress has power to levy taxes; that it must do so to raise revenue for the support of the government. Therefore this lying congress call this penalty a "tax," instead of calling it by its true name, a penalty.