The court decides that "_legal tender notes have become the universal measure of values_." This is simply untrue. In all quotations of values, the measure is fixed by gold, and then legal tender notes are quoted as being worth such per cent less (or what amounts to the same thing); gold is quoted as being worth ten, fifteen, twenty, or more cents to the dollar more than paper, and while the value of gold is fixed, that of treasury notes is constantly fluctuating. Under this decision railroad companies, and their associates, the Wall street gamblers, control the finances, while all the honest and legitimate business of the country languishes. Had the court designed to place the whole interests of the government and the people in the power of these corrupt rings and dishonest brokers, no more effectual means could have been devised or adopted. Justice Bradley, in his opinion concurring with the opinion of Justice Strong, makes use of the following bold and dangerous language: "It is absolutely essential to independent national existence that government should have a firm hold in the two great sovereign instrumentalities of the _Sword_ and the _Purse_, and the right to wield them on occasions of national peril." Let this pernicious doctrine be accepted as the law of the land; let the _purse and the sword_ be placed in the hands of government officials without restrictions, and what vestige of republican institutions is left? What difference is there between our government and absolute despotism? But more than this, let the highest court of a nation, by a partisan decision, place the _purse_ of the nation in the hands of a gigantic monopoly, banded together for the purpose of plundering the public, and what vestige of independence is left the people? Reader, look carefully at the almost unlimited power the corporations of the country have obtained over each department of the government; at the legal tender decision and its effect upon the people of the country, and then ask yourself if we, as a nation, are not nearing the point where we cease to be a republic, save in name. This decision impairs the obligation of contracts, in violation of the letter and spirit of the constitution. It compels the creditor to take from the debtor irredeemable paper at par, on a contract payable in money. It says that a mere promise to pay is a legal tender. It makes it absolutely impossible to resume specie payment because it withdraws all coin from circulation, and does away with the necessity for its use in domestic transactions. The coin of the country is shipped to foreign countries to meet demands against us in those countries, and to pay for such commodities as we purchase from them. Credit currency, no matter whether it is issued by the general or state government is not, nor can it under the the constitution, be made a legal tender by act of congress or by a decision of any court in the land, because the laws of trade