Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/238

 230 an express and substantive prohibition of the enactment of tender laws. If, therefore, the construction were admissible, the constitution would be chargeable with the folly of providing against the emission of bills of credit, which could not, in consequence of another prohibition, have any legal existence. The constitution considers the emission of bills of credit, and the enactment of tender laws, as distinct operations, independent of each other, which may be frequently performed. Both are forbidden. To sustain the one, because it is not also the other; to say, that bills of credit may be emitted, if they are not made a tender in payment of debts, is, in effect, to expunge that distinct, independent prohibition, and to read the clause, as if it had been entirely omitted. No principle of interpretation can justify such a course.

§ 1360. The history of paper money in the American colonies and states is often referred to for the purpose of showing, that one of its great mischiefs was its being made a legal tender in the discharge of debts; and hence the conclusion is attempted to be adduced, that the words of the constitution may be restrained to this particular intent. But, if it were true, that the evils of paper money resulted solely from its being made a tender, it would be wholly unjustifiable on this account to narrow down the words of the constitution, upon a mere conjecture of intent, not derivable from those words. A particular evil may have induced a legislature to enact a law; but no one would imagine, that its language, if general, ought to be confined to that single case. The leading motive for a constitutional provision may have been a particular mischief; but it may yet have been intended to cut down all others of a like