private right.  Such cases are clearly and unquestionably within its operation.  Still, we think its main scope to be general and political.  And this, we think, is proved by reference to the history of the country, and to the great objects which were sought to be attained by the establishment of the present government.  Commerce, credit, and confidence were the principal things which did not exist under the old Confederation, and which it was a main object of the present Constitution to create and establish.  A vicious system of legislation, a system of paper money and tender laws, had completely paralyzed industry, threatened to beggar every man of property, and ultimately to ruin the country.  The relation between debtor and creditor, always delicate, and always dangerous whenever it divides society, and draws out the respective parties into different ranks and classes, was in such a condition in the years 1787, 1788, and 1789, as to threaten the overthrow of all government; and a revolution was menaced, much more critical and alarming than that through which the country had recently passed.  The object of the new Constitution was to arrest these evils; to awaken industry by giving security to property; to establish confidence, credit, and commerce, by salutary laws, to be enforced by the power of the whole community.  The Revolutionary War was over, the country had peace, but little domestic tranquillity; it had liberty, but few of its enjoyments, and none of its security.  The States had struggled together, but their union was imperfect.  They had freedom, but not an established course of justice.  The Constitution was therefore framed, as it professes, “to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to secure the blessings of liberty, and to insure domestic tranquillity.”

It is not pertinent to this occasion to advert to all the means by which these desirable ends were to be obtained.  Some of them, closely connected with the subject now under consideration, are obvious and prominent.  The objects were commerce, credit, and mutual confidence in matters of property; and these required, among other things, a uniform standard of value or medium of payments.  One of the first powers given to Congress, therefore, is that of coining money and fixing the value of foreign coins; and one of the first restraints imposed on the States is the total prohibition to coin money.  These two provisions are industriously followed up and completed by denying to the States all power to emit bills of credit, or to make any thing but gold and silver a tender in the payment of debts.  The whole control, therefore, over the standard of value and medium of payments is vested in the general government.  And here the question instantly suggests itself.  Why should such pains be taken to confide to Congress alone this exclusive power of fixing on a standard of value, and of prescribing the medium in which debts shall be paid, if it is, after all, to be left to every State to declare that debts may be discharged, and to prescribe how they may be discharged, without any payment at all?  Why say that no man shall be obliged to take, in discharge of a debt, paper money issued by the authority of a State, and yet say that by the same authority the debt may be discharged without any payment whatever?