Loper v. State

• Decision Date: 31 May 1826
• Parties: LOPER v. THE STATE.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

1 Mo. 632

LOPER

v.THE STATE.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

May Term, 1826.

ERROR TO ST LOUIS CIRCUIT COURT.

TOMPKINS, J.

It appearing from the record that the Circuit Attorney, on the part of the State, filed a petition in the Circuit Court of St. Louis county, to foreclose a mortgage made by Loper to the State. Loper pleaded that the mortgage was made in consideration of certain bills of credit, commonly called loan office certificates, which were emitted and loaned to him by the State, in violation of the Constitution of the United States. To this plea the State demurred, and had judgment.

The counsel for the plaintiff in error made several points, of which the following only will be considered in this opinion: First. That loan office certificates are bills of credit, in the sense of the Constitution. Second. That the act of lending the loan office certificates, is the very act of emission prohibited by the Constitution, and that in such case the condition of the defendant is best.

The principle involved in this cause, had been once before considered, in the case of The State v. Graves,^(a) and others, decided at Jackson in 1824; but as the court was not unanimous in that decision, it was thought proper to permit the plaintiff in error to be heard in this case on the same principle.

We believe that the loan office certificates are bills of credit, in the sense of the Constitution of the United States, and it only remains to be considered, whether the loan of them to the plaintiff in error is the act of emission prohibited by that Constitution, for if it be, then the judgment of the Circuit Court must be reversed. By the tenth section of the first article of the Constitution, it is provided, among other things, that no State shall emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts. The thirteenth section of the act for the establishment of loan offices provides, that the certificates shall be receivable by all officers in the State, both civil and military, in the discharge of salaries and fees of office. Before the adoption of the federal Constitution, the States had passed laws for the emission of biils of credit for other purposes than those above mentioned. Private persons received them for property appropriated by law to public uses, and to render them more useful to the State, they were made a tender of payment of debts; thus it was attempted to give them an imaginary value, at the expense of officers, both civil and military, and of other persons, whose services or property the State wanted, as well as of persons who had debts outstanding in the State. It must be here remembered, that in a state of war, when each State paid its own soldiers, it become necessary to emit large sums. The depreciation of the credit of this paper was rapid, and the States, when they redeemed it, paid not its nominal value, but its current price. The ruinous consequences to all classes of the community...