The question then arises: Are bank notes having the requisite
characteristics placed by the clause just quoted on the same footing
with the legal currency, so as to make it the duty of the Secretary of
the Treasury to allow the receipt of them when tendered by the debtor?
In my judgment, such is not the effect of the provision.
If Congress had intended to make so important an alteration of the
existing law as to compel the receiving officers to take payment in the
bank notes described in the bill, the natural phraseology would have
been, "in the legal currency of the United States _and_ in notes of
banks which are payable and paid in the legal currency," etc. And it is
reasonable to presume that Congress would have used such, phraseology,
or would have gone on to make a distinct provision expressly declaring
that such bank notes _should be receivable, _as was done in the bank
charters of 1790 and 1816, and as was also done by the acts relative to
evidences of debt, Treasury notes, and Virginia land scrip. The form of
one of these provisions (the fourteenth section of the act incorporating
the late Bank of the United States) will illustrate the idea I desire
to present:
"SEC.
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