This quotation from the opinion of the court may be taken as a sample of the reasoning in favor of a reversal of former decisions on the question of legal tender. After elaborate argument in the same strain, by Justice Strong, and also by Justice Bradley, a majority of the court decide that the legal tender acts are constitutional, while the four judges remaining on the bench, who but a short time before had made a contrary decision, dissent from the opinion of the majority. The argument of the majority in favor of the decision seems to ignore the real question, to-wit, the constitutionality of the acts of congress, and to place the decision upon the ground that a contrary holding would be ruinous to the financial interests of the country. The assertion is made that the decision "_will affect the entire business of the country, and take hold of the possible continued existence of the government_." The decision was made about one year ago, and its effects on the business interests of the country are made manifest. If the court believed that the decision sustaining the legal tender acts would prove beneficial to the people, it was sadly mistaken. But if it believed such a decision would strengthen monopolies, and enable a few railroad managers and Wall street brokers to corner and control the finances of the country, then the decision was a success. The effect has been to unsettle the commercial and financial interests of the country, and to show that treasury notes, if they are the standard of values, are a fluctuating standard. The consequence of the decision has taken "_hold of the possible continued existence of the government_," and has enabled the gold and stock gamblers in Wall street to suck the life-blood of the nation. The decision gives strength to corporations, who, uniting with Wall street brokers, are depleting the treasury of the nation to advance their own private purposes. By the decision two standards of value are fixed: one that is stable, and must ever remain so--the standard of money--gold and silver; the other, the standard of fluctuating paper, of no intrinsic value, liable to be inflated or depressed, as shall best subserve the interests of the parties who, by combining, have got such absolute control of the market as to be able to change the value of this _legal tender_ paper at pleasure. The idea advanced in the decision, that to declare that nothing but coin could be a legal tender, would cause widespread ruin, presents but a partial view of this matter. As a matter of fact, no act of congress prior to 1862 had ever been passed making anything but coin a legal tender; nor was there any decision of the supreme court recognizing or deciding that paper money could be a legal tender until 1872; and yet no such widespread ruin had overtaken the financial interests of the country as has manifested itself since that decision was rendered.