No. 44: Restrictions on the Authority of
the Several States
Friday, January 25, 1788.
Friday, January 25, 1788.
Author: James Madison
No State shall enter
into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and
reprisal; coin money;
emit bills of credit;
make any thing but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of
attainder, ex-post-facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts; or grant any
title of nobility.
The right of coining money, which is here
taken from the States, was left in their hands by the Confederation, as a
concurrent right with that of Congress, under an exception in favor of the
exclusive right of Congress to regulate the alloy and value. A right of coinage in the particular
States could have no other effect than to multiply expensive mints and
diversify the forms and weights of the circulating pieces.
The loss which America
has sustained since the peace, from the pestilent effects of paper money on the
necessary confidence between man and man, on the necessary confidence in the
public councils, on the industry and morals of the people, and on the character
of republican government, constitutes an enormous debt against the States chargeable with this
unadvised measure, which must long remain unsatisfied; or rather an accumulation
of guilt, which can be expiated no otherwise than by a voluntary sacrifice on
the altar of justice, of the power which has been the instrument of it. In
addition to these persuasive considerations, it may be observed, that the same
reasons which show the necessity of denying to the States the power of
regulating coin, prove
with equal force that they ought not to be at liberty to substitute a paper
medium in the place of coin.
Had every State a right to regulate the value of its coin, there might be as many different
currencies as States, and thus the intercourse among them would be impeded;
retrospective alterations in its value might be made, and thus the citizens of
other States be injured, and animosities be kindled among the States
themselves. The subjects of foreign powers might suffer from the same cause,
and hence the Union be discredited
and embroiled by the indiscretion of a single member. No one of these mischiefs
is less incident to a power in the States to emit paper money, than to coin gold or silver. The
power to make any thing but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts, is withdrawn from the
States, on the same principle with that of issuing a paper currency.
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