The question then arises:  Are bank notes having the requisite characteristics placed by the clause just quoted on the same footing with the legal currency, so as to make it the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to allow the receipt of them when tendered by the debtor?  In my judgment, such is not the effect of the provision.

If Congress had intended to make so important an alteration of the existing law as to compel the receiving officers to take payment in the bank notes described in the bill, the natural phraseology would have been, “in the legal currency of the United States and in notes of banks which are payable and paid in the legal currency,” etc.  And it is reasonable to presume that Congress would have used such, phraseology, or would have gone on to make a distinct provision expressly declaring that such bank notes should be receivable, as was done in the bank charters of 1790 and 1816, and as was also done by the acts relative to evidences of debt, Treasury notes, and Virginia land scrip.  The form of one of these provisions (the fourteenth section of the act incorporating the late Bank of the United States) will illustrate the idea I desire to present: 

“SEC. 14. And be it further enacted, That the bills or notes of the said corporation, originally made payable, or which shall have become payable, on demand, shall be receivable in all payments to the United States, unless otherwise directed by act of Congress.”

The difference between the language there used and that employed in the present bill is too obvious to require comment.  It is true that the word “or,” when it occurs in wills and agreements, is sometimes construed to mean “and,” in order to give effect to the plain intent of the parties; and such a construction of the word may sometimes be given when it occurs in statutes, where the general intent of the lawmakers evidently requires it.  But this construction of the word in the present case is not only unnecessary, but, in my opinion, repugnant to the whole scope of the bill, which, so far from commanding the public officers to receive bank notes in cases not required by the existing laws, introduces several new prohibitions on the receipt of such notes.

Nor do I think this one of those cases in which a choice is given to the debtor to pay in one or other of two descriptions of currency, both of which are receivable by law.  Such a choice was given by the land law of the 10th of May, 1800, section 5, between specie and the evidences of the public debt of the United States then receivable by law, and also by the joint resolution of the 30th of April, 1816, between “the legal currency of the United States, or Treasury notes, or notes of the Bank of the United States, as by law provided and declared.”  The option given by that resolution continued in force so long as the laws providing and declaring that Treasury notes and notes of the Bank of the United States should