It appears to us to follow, as a logical and necessary consequence, that congress has the power to issue the obligations of the United States in such form, and to impress upon them such qualities as currency, for the purchase of merchandise and the payment of debts, _as accord with the usage of other sovereign governments_. The power, as incident to the power of borrowing money, and issuing bills or notes of the government for money borrowed, of impressing upon those bills or notes the quality of being a legal tender for the payment of private debts, _was a power universally understood to belong to sovereignty, in Europe and America, at the time of the framing and adoption of the constitution of the United States_. The governments of Europe, acting through the monarch, or the legislature, according to the distribution of powers _under their respective constitutions_, had, and have, as _sovereign_ a power of issuing paper money as of stamping coin. This power has been distinctly recognized in an important modern case, ably argued and fully considered, in which the Emperor of Austria, as King of Hungary, obtained from the English Court of Chancery an injunction against the issue, in England, without his license, of notes purporting to be public paper money of Hungary.--_p. 447._ Also it speaks of: Congress, as the legislature of a _sovereign_ nation.--_p. 449._ Also it said: The power to make the notes of the government a legal tender in payment of private debts, _being one of the powers belonging to sovereignty in other civilized nations_, ... we are irresistibly impelled to the conclusion that the impressing upon the treasury notes of the United States the quality of being a legal tender in payment of private debts, is an appropriate means, conducive and plainly adapted to the execution of the undoubted powers of congress, consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution, etc.----_p._ 450.