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that the plaintiff in action upon a promissory note payable on demand in specie, can only recover judgment for the amount of the face of the note and interest thereon, although he offers to prove that at the time when payment of the note was demanded, specie was worth a premium above par. The note on which the action was

brought was as follows:

'Chicopee, December 31, 1861. "$500.-For value received I promise to pay Joseph E. Wood or order five hundred dollars on demand, with interest-the above payable in specie.

"A. BULLENS.”

The opinion of the Court was prepared by Judge Chapman, and was as follows:

"This action is brought upon a promissory note for $500, payable on demand, and interest, with the additional words, The above payable in specie.' The plaintiff proved that he had demanded payment of the note in specie, and offered to prove that on the day he made the demand specie was worth a certain premium above par. He contends that he is entitled to recover judgment for the amount of such premium in addition to the sum of $500 and interest. This position assumes that specie is to be regarded as an article of merchandise, and not as money. For if we regard it as money, it is itself the standard of value, and the statement that a dollar can be above or below par is absurd. It is, in effect, a statement that a dollar can be worth more or less than a dollar. Dealers in money may for their own convenience, and especially in respect to foreign trade, treat money as merchandise, and speak of gold and silver as being above or below par. But when a gold or silver dollar is spoken of in this manner, it is with reference to something else as a standard of par value. Thus it sometimes happened that the market value of these two metals has changed, and that a dollar in silver has been worth more in market than a dollar in gold. Yet the Courts have been compelled by law to treat them as money, and to reg rd a dollar of one metal as equal to a dollar of the other. Equality may be wholly or partially restored by debasing one species of coin or improving that of the other. It is one of the attributes of sovereignty to do this; and when it is done, courts of law must conform to the change, and regard that as a dollar which Congress declares to be so. A judgment in a suit upon a note must be rendered for a certain sum in money, expressed in dollars and cents. Execution must issue for this sum, with costs, and the amount is to be collected. If we were to add to the amount of the note and interest a further sum-for example, one hundred dollars as a premium on specie—the execution would still be collectable in money. If the officer could seize a sufficient amount of gold or silver to pay the execution and costs, he would pay to the plaintiff the specie, and thus the plaintiff would obtain more than the amount of his

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debt. If the defendant's goods should be sold at auction on execution, and the purchasers should pay in specie, the same result would follow. If land should be set off on execution, its value may be so changed by the condition of the currency as to affect the interests of the parties materially. It may be that the judgment will remain unsatisfied till gold, as merchandise, shall sink below par. This would again affect the interests of the parties and the value of the judgment. The weekly fluctuations of the gold market are constantly operating in the same way. But these are matters which are beyond the reach of courts of law. They involve values, and sometimes equities, which no judicial tribunal can adjust or regulate. All that courts can do is to treat as money that which the statutes of the United States legally enacted declare to be money. If it were in our power to render a specific judgment, designating the species of currency in which it should be paid, we might avoid some of the existing difficulties, but we have no such authority."

Here we have a case in Massachusetts, where the ruling of the Court would have been made payable in specie, according to the promise of the signer of the note, if there had been a statute of the State allowing the Court to render a specific judgment, designating the currency in which it should be paid. Certainly nothing could be more pertinent, or show the utility of the Specific Contract Law of California more clearly, than this ruling of Judge Chapman. Every State in the Union needs a law which will enable courts and sheriffs to enforce the payment of contracts in gold coin, when the parties to such contracts stipulate such form of payment. (Pages 75 to 81.)

A RECENT DECISION.

The following case came before the United States Court, Judge Smalley :

"Lawrence Gladstone et al. agt. William Chamberlain et al. The defendants chartered the British vessel John of Gaunt from plaintiffs, to bring a cargo from the island of Ceylon to the United States, and in the contract agreed to pay plaintiffs $29,000 cash, in consideration thereof. On the delivery of the cargo, the defendants paid the above amount to plaintiffs in legal tender notes, and contended that that was a discharge of their obligations. Plaintiffs consider that only so much paid on account, and con

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tended that the word cash in the contract meant specie -gold or silver.

The question in relation to this point was, from the evidence, left to the jury to decide, which they did by bringing in a verdict for plaintiffs for $18,066—that being the difference in value between gold and greenbacks at the time of the delivery of the cargo, with interest added to date.

This verdict was strictly in accordance with the ruling of the Judge."

"PUNISHING TRADE FOR THE SINS OF PAPER."

"The truth is, this 'protective system' bore so unequally on different branches of industry, and on different sections of country, as to give some a license to extract tribute from others, and to excite dishonest hopes and wishes in nearly all. Government having once opened the flood-gates of favoritism, each workman and each class was too weak to stem the torrent, and naturally strove to win as much and lose as little as possible. The hatter aimed to get the highest possible duty on imported hats; the shoemaker on imported shoes; the owners of cloth factories, on imported cloths and so on, through all the trades which foreign competition could affect. Some were more successful, and some less; some got five per cent. 'protection,' some twenty, some thirty, some fifty, with a juggle of false valuation that might raise it above one hundred in practice; but all who got or tried to get any favoritism at all, became as truly implicated in the crime as those who got most, and as truly belonged with the opponents of free trade and natural justice. Hence the long endurance of the system, notwithstanding its im policy and wickedness.

Great pecuniary losses resulted from the fallacious hopes thus raised hopes which led thousands to embark in 'protected' branches of industry that they did not understand, trusting to a congressional abrogation of God's laws of trade for their customers and profits-yet all pecuniary losses have been as nothing compared with the injury done to our national dignity and our political morals. The Protective System was a second dagger planted in the heart of democratic government, paper money being the first. It transformed our Government from an upholder and obeyer of God's justice into a framer and enforcer of antagonistic laws; from a protector of man's personal rights into their violator and betrayer; from a public watchman into a public abettor of trespass and extortion. It created a new order of nobility, in fact if not in form; for it privileged men to make free with other men's rights and earnings. It degraded the laborer, by segregating him from the world-wide

Republic of Industry-a republic where merit or the best workman governs by divine right-and compelling him, on local grounds, to spend his substance with those who could not serve him cheapest and best. By stripping him of his just rights over his own purse, the fruits of his own toil, it robbed him of his manhood and made him a Slave-a Government Chattel-who must buy and sell, not according to his own will, but the will of a master. I say this, not in the language of passion, but in scientific exactness; for, certainly, so far as a man holds his personal rights subject to the power of another-so far as he is deprived of any just liberty, whether by an individual or by Government-so far is he a slave, if not in title, yet in truth. Nor is the injury or the degradation any the less, because it is inflicted by the victim's government instead of open enemies. Government can no more make or unmake the personal rights of its citizens than a farmer's watch-dog can make or unmake his title to his sheep. All that governments or majorities can rightfully do, in regard to any man's natural rights and liberties, is to guard them faithfully and strike down every invader. The fact that I and my fellow-citizens have clubbed together and employ a common guard to stand sentry over our rights and liberties, gives me no claim to any right that is theirs, and gives them no destroying power over any right that is mine. They have no more right to rob me of my money, or of my right to spend it with whom I please, because I live under the same government that they do, than I have to shoot them because they live under the same government that I do.

If we consider the Protective System in its other aspect, that of a system of taxation for the support of Government, it is, if possible, worse still. It apportions the burdens of Government without the slightest regard to equity, stripping some men and sections of perhaps a fourth of all their toil, while giving bounties or pensions to others, whose lives are no more virtuous, and whose industry is no more useful. Under the tariff of 1828, two men, A and B, might each take his year's produce to the old world and sell it for the same amount-say $1,100. If A brought home the proceeds of his crop in lace and jewelry, he would be taxed on his return seven and a half per cent. on $1,100-$82 50. If B brought home his crop in the form of one thousand yards of woolens, at one dollar and ten cents per yard, Government would tax him at forty-five per cent. on an assumed value of $2,500-$1,125, or $1,042 50 more than A. Less than one-thirteenth of A's crop would go for taxes; Government would eat up the whole of B's!

Another wrong of the Protective System is, that it throws the whole burden of federal taxation upon one kind of property, or the producers thereof, while practically exempting all others. It throws the whole burden upon those producers who sell their work in the world's market, or abroad; leaving those who produce nothing for, and carry nothing to, that market, tax free. Worst of all, (and this is the secret of its protective power) it enables this latter class to levy taxes or tribute upon the former, for their own private pleasure and emolument; for, to prohibit those who sell their crops in the world's market from buying their supplies there, is to force them to

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buy in the protected market, and to put them in the power of those who sell or keep stands in it.

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To understand distinctly where the weight of the tariff falls, and whence the profits it conveys to pet interests are taken, (for every weight must bear on something, and all money-profits must be parted with by somebody before they can be pocketed by anybody) we must ponder these cardinal truths of financial science, viz :— That all schemes for making either persons or nations rich without work, or out of proportion to the wealth they may actually produce, are utter fallacies, or else schemes of spoliation. That, as it is impossible for darkness to cover all the earth at once, so long as the sun shall shine in the heavens, neither can any financial imposition darken all nations at once so long as Truth shall reign. That genuine labor-products, such as gold, wheat, cotton, and things whose value depends on true human needs instead of mesmerie and gov. ernmental illusions, will always have a world-wide currency; while conventional wealth and might can only be kept up by being kept within the charmed circle or mesmeric sphere of their imaginationforcing creators. That there must always be a world's market, or center of trade for all nations, where things without intrinsic value are but losing ventures, and whither only things of true use can be profitably sent: such world's market being not so much a geographical center as a region of commercial sanity, wherein no man can be a merchant any further than he respects verities, and takes things for exactly what they are. That the true financial health and strength of a country are known by the ability of its producers to sell their works in the world's market readily and profitably; which they can do in proportion to the lightness of their taxes, impositions and extortions, and the extent of their industry and skill. That as the farmer gains in purse, not by the grain he eats, but what he sells, so the only persons (save miners of the precious metals) who add aught to the moneyed wealth of a nation, are those who send and sell their labor-products abroad; and a Government that obstructs such sales by taxing its citizens, or confiscating portions of their goods as they return from foreign markets with their purchases, not only commits a sin, but a fatal blunder also. That cotton, and all products readily convertible into specie in the world's market, or that answer the purposes of cash therein, are virtual specie to that extent; and every injury done to specie by the issuing of paper, is equally an injury to such cash-products, or, rather, to their producers and owners. That in proportion as the wealth-producers of a country are compelled, either by law or custom, to give real wealth for paper wealth, real work or service for sham work or service, the cost of production among them is increased, and their ability to compete with other nations is diminished. That the real object and operation of a protective tariff are, to force a home market for such citizens as are thus shut out of the world's market at the expense of such other citizens as, owing to peculiar advantages of soil or climate, or to superior skill in certain kinds of work, are not shut out of the world's market. Thus, a protective tariff is a bludgeon to prevent people from making good bargains abroad and DD*