The law having passed,
however, by a majority, its opponents, true to the sacred principle
of submission to a majority, suffered the law to flow through its term
without obstruction. During this, the nation had time to consider
the constitutional question, and when the renewal was proposed, they
condemned it, not by their representatives in Congress only, but by
express instructions from different organs of their will. Here then
we might stop, and consider the memorial as answered. But, setting
authority apart, we will examine whether the legislature ought to comply
with it, even if they had the power.
Proceeding to reason on this subject, some principles must be premised
as forming its basis. The adequate price of a thing depends on the
capital and labor necessary to produce it. (In the term capital, I mean
to include science, because capital as well as labor has been employed
to acquire it.) Two things requiring the same capital and labor should
be of the same price. If a gallon of wine requires for its production
the same capital and labor with a bushel of wheat, they should be
expressed by the same price, derived from the application of a common
measure to them. The comparative prices of things being thus to be
estimated, and expressed by a common measure, we may proceed to observe,
that were a country so insulated as to have no commercial intercourse
with any other, to confine the interchange of all its wants and supplies
within itself, the amount of circulating medium, as a common measure
for adjusting these exchanges, would be quite immaterial.
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