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174 under the law, that the law is open to "reversal" because it was passed "in the dark"?

Was it Passed Surreptitiously?

How can a law be passed through Congress surreptitiously? We have indeed heard of bills being "smuggled through" in the confusion attending the last hours of the session, or as an amendment, or under a misleading title. There are the rules of order, however, by which all legislation is enacted. All laws which get through the mill are equally valid. There never has been and never can be any distinction drawn between them according to their legislative history. In the present case there was not the slightest manoeuvre or trick, nor is there even room to trump up an allegation of the kind.

That the People Did Not Know of It.

It is said that "the people" did not know what was being done. How do they ever know what is being done? There is all the machinery of publicity, and it is all at work. If people do not heed (and of course in nearly all cases they do not), whose fault is it? Who is responsible to go to the ten million voters individually and make sure that they heed, lest twenty-five years later somebody may say that the fact that they did not heed lays down a justification for a new project which certainly is "a crime" in the new sense which is given to that word here?

Motive of the Law.

The act of 1873 did not affect any rights or interests. It took away an option which had existed since 1834, but had never been used, and, for ten years before this act was passed, had sunk entirely out of sight under paper-money