The Administration lost no time in trying to bring about by fair means or foul, a reversal of this unwelcome decision. E. R. Hoar of Massachusetts, at that time attorney-general in Grant's Cabinet, was the principal agent in accomplishing this end by means so discreditable that he lost in consequence his popularity in Massachusetts and all chance of further political preferment. The means chosen and put into effect was the appointment by the President of two new judges, Strong and Bradley, the first to take the place of Grier, resigned, and the second appointed under a law increasing the number of judges to nine, whose opinions on the point at issue were known beforehand, and who were selected to serve on that very account. "_It was no secret, indeed it was a matter of public notoriety, that these justices were appointed in order that the decision of 1869 might be reversed. Their opinions in regard to the constitutionality of the Legal-Tender Acts had been clearly and publicly expressed. It was therefore pretty well known what the decision would be when the question was again presented._" (Hugh McCulloch.) The second Legal-Tender case, accordingly, that of Knox _versus_ Lee, decided in December, 1870, reversed the judgment of a year before, _no new points therefor being raised either by the new judges or by counsel in the new trial_, the Chief Justice and his three former associates still adhering to their original opinions. It was then five judges to four, the special question being, Is it constitutional to make promises-to-pay a legal tender on contracts executed before the promises were issued? The judicial answer was in this case, Yes; provided Congress regarded such action as a necessary means of preserving the Government in time of War, or any other period of extraordinary emergency. That is to say, _bona fide_ creditors were constitutionally bound to receive depreciated notes as legal tender in satisfaction of contracts entered into when no notes were in existence; to receive on contracts specifically calling for "_dollars_" the depreciated notes of the Government merely promising to pay "_dollars_," but on which the "_dollars_" could not be obtained! What is that, but the monstrous incongruity that _a promise_ is the same thing legally as its _fulfilment_? What is that but judicial blindness as to the _nature_ of Credit? What is it but the old confusion between _names_ and _things_? What is it, finally, but the dazed and hazy vision, pardonable perhaps in the popular mind but half-opened to radical distinctions, but unpardonable in learned men professing to lay down the law in a civilized country?