There is no well-founded distinction to be made between the constitutional validity of an act of congress declaring treasury notes a legal tender for the payment of debts contracted after its passage, and that of an act making them a legal tender for the discharge of _all_ debts, _as well those incurred before, as those made after, its enactment_.--_Legal Tender Cases_, 12 _Wallace_ 530 (1870).
Every contract for the payment of money, simply, is necessarily subject to the constitutional power of the government over the currency, whatever that power may be, _and the obligation of the parties is, therefore, assumed with reference to that power_.--12 _Wallace_ 549.
Contracts for the payment of money are subject to the authority of congress, _at least so far as relates to the means of payment_.--12 _Wallace_ 549.
The court means here to say that "every contract for the payment of money, simply," is necessarily made, by the parties, _subject to the power of congress to alter it afterward_--by altering the kind and value of the money with which it may be paid--_into anything, into which_ they (congress) _may choose to alter it_.
And this is equivalent to saying that all such contracts are made, by the parties, with _the implied understanding that the contracts, as written and signed by themselves, do not bind either of the parties to anything_; but that they simply suggest, or initiate, some non-descript or other, which congress may afterward convert into a binding contract, _of such a sort, and only such a sort, as_ they (congress) _may see fit to convert it into_.
Every one of these judges knew that no two men, having common honesty and common sense,--unless first deprived of all power to make their own contracts,--would ever enter into a contract to pay money, with any understanding that the government had any such arbitrary power as the court here ascribes to it, to alter their contract after it should be made. Such an absurd contract would, in reality, be no _legal_ contract at all. It would be a mere gambling agreement, having, naturally and really, no _legal_ "obligation" at all.
But further. A _solvent_ contract to pay money is in reality--in law, and in equity--_a bona fide mortgage upon the debtor's property_. And this mortgage right is as veritable a right of property, as is any right of property, that is conveyed by a warranty deed. And congress has no more right to invalidate this mortgage, by a single iota, than it has to invalidate a warranty deed of land. And these judges will sometime find out that such is "the obligation of contracts," if they ever find out what "the obligation of contracts" is.