“To coin money and regulate the value thereof as an act of sovereignty involves the right to determine what shall be taken and received as money; at what measure or price it shall be taken; and what shall be its effect when passed or tendered in payment or satisfaction of legal obligations. Government can give to its stamp upon leather the same money value as if put upon gold or silver or any other material. The authority which coins or stamps itself upon the article can select what substance it may deem suitable to receive the stamp and pass as money; and it can affix what value it deems proper, independent of the intrinsic value of the substance upon which it is affixed. The currency value is in the stamp, when used as money, and not in the material independent of the stamp. In other words, the MONEY QUALITY is the authority which makes it current and gives it power to accomplish the purpose for which it was created.”—_Tiffany, Constitutional Law._ “Whatever power is over the currency is vested in Congress. If the power to declare what is money is not in Congress, it is annihilated.... We repeat, money is not a substance, but an impression of legal authority, a printed legal decree.”—_U. S. Supreme Court (12 Wallace, p. 519)._ “The gold dollar is not a commodity having an intrinsic value, but _money_ having only a statutory value; and every dollar has the same value without regard to the material. The gold dollar has not intrinsic value.”—_Supreme Court of Iowa (16 Iowa Rep., p. 246)._ “Money is the medium of exchange. Whatever performs this function, does the work, is money, no matter what it is made of.”—_Walker, Political Economy._ “An article is determined to be money by reason of the performance by it of certain functions, without regard to its form or substance.”—_Appleton’s Encyclopedia._ “Money is a value created by law. Its basis is legal, and not material. It is, perhaps, not easy to convince one that the value of metallic money is created by law. It is, however, a fact.”—_Cernuschi._ Specie Basis.