Page:Justice and Jurisprudence - 1889.pdf/157

106 for the special and general welfare of the members of the various classes must be observed in the diagnoses of their complicated diseases and in their treatment. Sometimes our judicial doctors violently dispute about their prescriptions, which they call their 'opinions.' In one notable case we called in two consulting physicians, and, wonderful to relate, the patient, a full-grown sick man of the Republican class, nicknamed 'Legal Tender,' was enabled to throw away the crutches upon which he had hobbled for years, simply by reversing the old-fashioned constitutional treatment, and substituting the new-fangled Republican materia medica.

"The Supreme Court decided that an obligation for the payment of money can be discharged by tender of notes or bills of credit of the government created as a means appropriate and defensible as an exercise of the war-power, or of the power resulting from an aggregate of powers, to act by any means not prohibited in the Constitution for the preservation of the government; and that, too, in spite of those provisions of the Constitution which forbid the taking of private property without compensation; holding that the exigency to justify its exercise is a question for Congress and not for courts to determine, and that it makes no difference that its exercise may incidentally affect the value of private contracts.

"We had a still more dangerous pupil in Mr. Tilden; his class-mates called him 'Uncle Sammy;' since his death we all revere him as the 'Sage of Greystone.' When standing at the very head of his class he was taken down by a violent illness in the fall of 1876. Dr. Chandler, the regular family physician, called into consultation fifteen other doctors, who were styled the Electoral Commission. These doctors were to decide whether Republican or Democratic prescriptions were the safer to be given to the patient. It was determined that those very celebrated physicians, Drs. Clifford, Miller, Field, and Strong, should consult with Dr. Davis, a regular Democratic practitioner, but an unlooked-for event summoned Dr. Davis, who was a surgeon of national repute, to another field of duty. Dr.