Hey
@cv5
I'm just dying to hear your explanation of that.
Glad you asked.....
I am sure that Kammy the commie could care less about Constitutional money. Or any other matter related to the Constitution or Bill of Rights for that matter. Anything goes is how these communists roll.
BTW....you are supposedly American and know nothing of Constitutional money and are perfectly willing to aid and abet communists like Kammy the commie? Shameful.
The Constitution’s Seven Money Clauses
They protect liberty and prosperity — when we follow them.
Seven clauses of the United States Constitution touch on questions that might be described as relating to monetary policy.
Properly interpreted, these seven clauses together form a system of rules that strongly protects economic prosperity and political liberty.
Four of the clauses include the word ‘money,’ three the word ‘coin,’ and two the word ‘dollars.’ /1
Below is the text of each of the clauses, followed by some definitions and comments. I’ve modernized the punctuation for readability.
The Seven Money Clauses
- Congress shall have power to borrow money on the credit of the United States. ~ Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 2.
- Congress shall have power to coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures. ~ Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 5.
- Congress shall have power to provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States. ~ Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 6.
- No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law. ~ Art. I, sec. 9, cl. 7.
- The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person. ~ Art. I, sec. 9, cl. 1.
- No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. ~ Art. I, sec. 10, cl. 1.
- In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved. ~ Amdt. VII.
The Constitution’s Five Monetary Rules
Read in conjunction with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and the obligation-of-contracts clause (Art. I, sec. 10, cl. 1), we can identify five monetary policies that are constitutionally requisite in the United States:
- The basic unit is the dollar, a silver coin containing 371.25 grains of pure silver.
- Only gold or silver coins and currency (specie-backed banknotes) can be legal tender.
- No state may issue coins or currency.
- No one may counterfeit U.S. Government-issued coins or currency.
- Fiat money notes (‘bills of credit’) are forbidden.
The remainder of this article defines some of the foregoing terms, and explains how we get to the five rules.
Definition: ‘Dollar’
The Constitution makes the ‘dollar’ the basic unit of account for the republic. It does not explicitly define the dollar. Why? Because no definition was necessary. Everyone at the time knew what a dollar was. It was a silver coin of a fixed weight and fineness, the most popular edition of which was the Spanish milled dollar. That popular coin, remembered today as ‘pieces of eight,’ contained on average 371.25 grains of pure silver or 416 grains of standard silver. ‘Standard silver’ is pure silver mixed with other metals, such as nickel or copper, for added durability. /5
Prior to the Coinage Act of 1792, also called the Mint Act, the Spanish dollar was basically the only ‘dollar’ Americans knew. The U.S. government did not mint its own version of the coin until
after the ratification of the Constitution (1788) and the Bill of Rights (1791).
In the Coinage Act, Congress codified the existing, universally understood definition of ‘dollar’:
DOLLARS OR UNITS — each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, and to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver.
2
