FIFTH.--_The Effect of the Legal Tender Decision, and its Antidote._--The power of congress to issue treasury notes and government paper as a war measure, is not denied. The authority or the right, under the constitution, to make government promises to pay (treasury notes) legal tender, is not admitted. We have already treated of the legal tender decisions; of the reconstruction of the court, and the means used to secure the appointment of judges to insure a majority in favor of the validity of the legal tender act, and its general application to all debts save those excepted in the act, no matter at what time they were contracted. We recur to this subject again for the purpose of showing its effect upon the financial interests of the country. Whatever may have been the views of congress in passing the act, or of the court in declaring it constitutional, it has proved disastrous to the interests of the people, and of great benefit to the corporate oligarchy that now rules the country. Whatever may have been the views of the majority of the court, or the motives that prompted and controlled that majority in rendering the legal tender decisions, these decisions have proved disastrous to the interests of the people, and added greatly to the already great power of corporations and Wall street speculators. In our commerce with foreign nations we are obliged to use _money_ or its equivalent. While the acts of congress and the decisions of courts may make treasury notes legal tender for all domestic debts, and all foreign debts payable in this country, neither the acts of congress nor the decisions of courts can have any power or controlling influence over other nations. Debts due from us payable in foreign countries must be paid in coin or its equivalent. Our governmental promises to pay will not pass current as money in foreign countries, even though accompanied and supported by the decision of the supreme court, deciding that they are to be received by us as legal tender in all of our transactions. No one will claim that treasury notes are money, or that they are of intrinsic value. It is because the government is pledged to redeem this class of paper with coin that it has a market value. All other nations recognize coin--gold and silver--as the measure of values. It is the standard for all other articles of barter or sale. It is _money_. All other issues are but the representatives of money. Debts due from us, payable in foreign countries, must be paid in money; legal tender will not answer. But if debts due us from persons residing in other countries are to be paid here, the debtors can take their money, buy our legal tender at a discount of fifteen or twenty dollars to the hundred, and discharge their debts, saving for themselves the difference between coin and paper. The confidence we have in the promises of the government to redeem in coin is all that makes treasury notes pass current, or gives them a market value.