VAN HUSAN V KANOUSE.

arbitrary standard. We cannot conceive that the power to regulate the value of coin makes that coin of necessity a legal tender at the value so fixed. It would be contrary to all usage, and would lead to absurd consequences. It is contrary to the experience of the Confederation, which was replaced by the Union. And we have the decision of the United States Supreme Court, in Craig v. Missouri, before cited, recognizing the enactment of tender laws as having no as having no necessary identity with laws concerning money. We have failed to find any decision or plausible reason for confounding them.

But, while establishing the value of currency does not make it a legal tender, and does not necessarily confine tenders to that any more than to any other commercial article; yet it may be fairly claimed that there should at least be made a standard of value, by which the currency should all be measured. But the relations of various coins to each other have always been more or less arbitrarily fixed. The relative values of silver and gold, as commodities, may fluctuate as they will without affecting the legal value of coin. The standard of purity has several times been changed. The standard of value of coins has by no means been made to correspond to their intrinsic value. All that can be required of Congress is, that the currency shall be uniform throughout the country; and then, whether it shall be depreciated or kept up to the highest standard must depend upon their own views of official duty. Whatever they lawfully determine to issue, they are unquestionably bound in justice to protect uniformly; and the power to issue a currency, and make it receivable at all by others than the Government, embraces the right and duty to place all persons on the same footing; for otherwise the power would be nugatory. The constitution clearly designed to take all questions of currency, whether paper or metal, from the hands of the several States; and we think it

VAN HUSAN V. KANOUSE.

is in the discretion of Congress to make of its tokens, whether of one substance or another, tenders, in such amounts, or for such purposes, as may be determined upon. And the practical construction has always recognized in Congress the authority to make general tender laws concerning specie at least.

It is very probable, as has been claimed, that the framers of the constitution did not anticipate that money would be made current, except in specic. But they had before them examples of a different practice, which they only saw fit to reprobate as resorted to by the several States. It had been deemed necessary by Congress, during the Confederation, to issue paper money, far in excess of any amount of specie which had then, or has since, been in the country. Very many men then thought, and now think, that the Revolution must have failed without it. The constitution placing the whole war power in the United States, and allowing the Government to raise its own revenue directly, the States could rarely thereafter have occasion to raise money, except for State purposes; and the prohibition against bills of credit could under no circumstances cramp them, to the general damage, while the power to issue such paper could hardly fail to create strife between them. The reasons urged by the statesmen of those days, in their public discussions of the constitution, were all aimed at the danger of allowing this power to the States. But the absence of any prohibition on the general Government, under these circumstances, is a very strong argument in favor of a design to leave it unembarrassed. As before intimated, however, we must look to the instrument itself; and we there find the office of the Union, in controlling the financial interests of the country, so plainly established that the exclusion of the means now adopted cannot be admitted, without an arbitrary insertion of limitations not to be found presented there.

PRICE . HOPKIN.

Whether the action of Congress has been wise or unwise, is a matter between them and their constituents. They have resorted to a plan which, if it causes sacrifices, has a tendency to equalize them. Whether the sacrifice could have been safely avoided, is a question which, if capable of any absolute and certain solution, can probably be answered more easily hereafter than now; and how it is to be answered, in no way concerns any judicial body.

lawful, and that the bill The decree must be affirmed,

We think the tender was was properly dismissed.

with costs.

The other Justices concurred.

Caroline Price v. William Hopkin and Another.

Limitation laws. - The Legislature has general power to pass limitation laws, prescribing the time within which parties shall assert their rights by suit; but this power is not so unlimited as to enable it, under the form of a limitation law, to take away all remedy.

Retrospective laws when invalid.

A legislative act, retrospective in its operation, and cutting off all remedy for the lapse of time occurring before it became a law, would violate the constitutional provision against depriving a person of property without due process of law, and, therefore, could not be sustained.

Statute does not affect rights until operative as a law. A statute passed to take effect at a future day is to be understood as speaking from the time it goes into operation, and not from the time of its passage. The intervening period is allowed to enable the public to become acquainted with its provisions; but until it becomes operative as a law, they are not compelled to govern their actions by it.

Where, therefore, by the law, as it stood on the 31st day of December, 1863, a person had sixteen years in which to bring suit for the recovery of a pareel of land claimed by her, and Act No. 227 of 1863, (Laws of 1863, p. 388,) if applied to the case, would have the effect, the moment it became operative, to cut off all remedy, it was held not to apply to such case.

PRICE . HOPKIN..

Error to Wayne Circuit.

Charles Tryon and Joseph E. Bigelow, for plaintiff in

error:

In a comprehensive sense, the term ex post facto law embraces all retrospective laws, or laws governing or controlling past transactions, whether they are of a civil or criminal nature. Sedgwick on Stat. and Const. Law pp. 499, 500; Calder v. Bull, 3 Dallas, 386.

Retrospective Laws are not confined to such as are enacted to take effect at a time anterior to their passage, but this term embraces all statutes which, operating only from their passage, affect vested rights and past transactions. Every statute which takes away or impairs vested rights acquired under existing laws, or creates a new obligation, or attaches a new disability in respect to transactions or considerations already past, must be deemed retrospective. The Society &c. v. Wheeler 2, Gall., 139; Smith's Com., 291; 1 Kent's Com., p. 455; Dash v. Van Kleeck, 7 J. R., 477.

An act of the Legislature is not to be construed to operate retrospectively, so as to take away a vested right. People v. Tibbets, 4 Cow., 384; Dash v. Van Kleeck, 7 J. R., 477.

An ex post facto law, in the strict technical sense of the term, is usually understood to apply to criminal cases; yet laws impairing previously acquired civil rights are equally within the reason of that prohibition, and equally to be condemned.- Opinion of Ch. J. Kent in Dash v. Van Kleeck, 7 J. R., 505.

Legislative acts creating new exceptions or defenses, or modifying previous remedies, should be so construed as not to affect rights of action which have attached and become vested under the original law, and exist at the time of the repealing statute.-Sedgwick on Stat. and Const. Law, 135, 660; Bedford v. Shilling, 4 S. & R., 401; Butler v. Palmer, 1 Hill, 324.

PRICE V. HOPKIN.

If a statute of limitations is retrospective, a reasonable time must be given to commence suits.- Pritchard v. Spencer, 2 Ind., 486; Sedgwick on Stat. and Const. Law, 659. 660, 690 and 691; Call v. Hagger, 8 Mass., 429; Holyoke v. Haskins, 5 Pick., 201; Smith v. Morrison, 22 Pick., 431; Holcomb v. Tracy, 2 Minn., 244.

If the statute in question is to have a retrospective operation, then, in all those cases where the time provided in it had already run out when it took effect and became a law, it had the effect to transfer the property from the actual owner, without his consent, to the party in possession, and is in violation of Section. 32 of Article VI., of the constitution of the State of Michigan, and void. - Taylor v. Taylor v. Porter, 4 Hill, 145; Wynehamer v. The People, 13 N. Y., 392; Norman v. Heist, 5 Watts & Sergt., 171; Hoke v. Henderson, 4 Dev., 15; 2 Kent's Com., 13; Jones v. Perry, 10 Yerger, 59; Embury v. Conner, 3 N. Y., 511; Westervelt v. Gregg, 12 N. Y., 202; Greene v. Briggs, 1 Curtis, 311; Hibbard v. The People, 4 Mich., 129; Bowman v. Mid dleton, 1 Bay, 252; Marray's Lessees v. Hoboken L. & I. Co., 18 How., 276; Vanzant v. Waddel, 2 Yerger, 260; State Bank v. Cooper, 2 Yerger, 599; Bronson v. Kinzie, 1 How., 311; McCracken v. Hayward, 2 How., 608; Arrowsmith v. Burlingim, 4 McLean, 494; Reed v. Wright, 2 Greene, 22; Sedgwick on Stat. and Const. Law, 537, et seq., and cases cited; Cargill v. Power, 1 Mich., 369.

Ward & Palmer, for defendant in error:

Statutes of limitation are too beneficial in their effects, and are too thoroughly engrafted into the policy of the country, to be rooted out or lightly overturned, and they will be held valid unless the constitutional restriction can be pointed out which they violate. Sears v. Cottrell, 5 Mich., 251; People v. Gallagher, 4 Mich., 244.