The following are some of the authorities to which great weight was given: "Commerce and population, which are the riches and power of the state, depend on the quantity and management of money."--John Law, Memoir to the Duke of Orleans, 1705. "Does, or does not, our duty to ourselves and the world at large demand that we maintain permanently a non-exportable circulation? Such is the question which now agitates the nation, and must at no distant day absorb all others. The affirmative of this question is also in perfect harmony with the practice and experience of leading nations, and in harmony with the teachings of sound economic science."--Letter of Henry C. Carey to Congressman Moses W. Field, of Detroit, September, 1875. Consult also Governor William Kieft, "On the Use of Wampum Money in New Amsterdam" (large folio, scarce and rare), 1659. "Long familiarity with the practice of giving security for loans, and of paying them back at a fixed date, has blinded us to the national advantages of loans without security and payable at any date."--Karl Marx, Secrétaire, Organisation de l'Internationale. But the thing which the philosophers relied on more than any thing else to sustain their views before the people was a judicial decision recently made in a neighboring country, by its highest court, before whom the question as to what constituted money was officially brought for determination. This decision, expressed in the very peculiar language of the country, was as follows: "What we do assert is, that Congress has power to enact that the Government promises to pay money shall be, for the time being, equivalent in value to the representative of value determined by the coinage acts, or to multiples thereof." All of which, translated into the language of the island, meant that Government has the power to make a promise to pay, containing an acknowledgment in itself that the promise has not been paid, a full satisfaction that the promise has been paid. That this decision, furthermore, covered no new points of law, was indirectly conceded by the learned judges, inasmuch as, in giving their opinions, they cited, as precedents worthy of being ever remembered, the decisions of that eminent old-time jurist, Cade (Jack), who ordained that "seven half-penny loaves should be sold for a penny;" and that "the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops." The same court also strengthened its position by saying that "it is hardly correct to speak of a standard of value. The Constitution does not speak of it. Value is an ideal thing. The coinage acts fix its unit as a dollar; but the gold and silver thing we call a dollar is in no sense the standard of a dollar. It is a representative of it. There might never have been a piece of money of the denomination of a dollar." [28]