Gordon v. Magone

40 F. 747, 1889 U.S. App. LEXIS 2583

Opinion

Lacombe, Circuit Judge,

(orally.) I shall follow the ruling which I made in the other case. Gordon v. Hedden, May 7, 1889.¹ It is not essential to a coin that it should bear the date of its issue, nor that it should bear the name or insignia, of the sovereign, nor that it should be of any particular form, nor that its counterfeiting be made a crime by statute. In this case it appears that in China small masses of silver, not always uniform in size, nor regular in shape, but conforming generally to the design which the witness drew for us, are brought to an officer to be weighed and assayed. That officer is not directly an appointee of the government, but it seems to acquiesce in his discharging his functions. He is selected by a consensus of the leading members of financial and commercial houses, and it is his duty, after examining each mass, to inscribe on it a statement of its weight and fineness, predicated on the tael as a standard. Thus upon each separate mass (called “syceo”) it is stated that it contains five taels and two-tenths, or three taels and one-seventh, or whatever may be the fact. These shoe-shaped pieces of silver, thus marked, circulate as the only money of account. They seem to be properly within the provisions of section 3564 of the Revised Statutes referred to, being of a substance intrinsically valuable, and as readily comparable with our standard as are the various gold and silver tokens of other countries. Such seems to have been the view taken at the mint, for the director has made the comparison and determination as to the Chinese tael, both in 1885 and 1886. There is no force in the contention of the defendant that a retrospective effect will he given to the proclamation of the secretary of the treasury if the plaintiffs’ views are sustained. It appears in jjroof by the proclamation of October 16, 1886, that the director of the mint made the determination of value which he was required to do. When, as matter of fact, he made such determination is not stated in the proclamation, and does not appear in proof. The statute directed him to make such determination in January of 1886, and, in the absence of any proof to the contrary, it will be presumed that he performed his entire duty, and made the determination at the time when the statute directed him to. A verdict is directed for the plaintiffs for the full amount claimed.

Footnotes

1

No opinion filed.