Well, if congress has power to alter men's contracts, after they are made, by altering the meaning of the word dollar, and thus reducing the value of the debt, it has a precisely equal power to increase the value of the dollar, and thus compel the debtor to pay more than he agreed to pay.
Spooner warns that if Congress can reduce the value of currency, it can also increase it, affecting debt obligations.
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And yet these reasons, which are really no reasons at all, are the only ones, so far as I know, that have ever been offered for this absurd and brutal doctrine.
They cannot claim or expect that the whole people shall practise the folly of taking on trust their pretended superior knowledge, and of committing blindly into their hands all their own interests, liberties, and rights, to be disposed of…
The presumption clearly is that all were eligible.
They are every day committing errors, which would be crimes, but for their ignorance of the law.