which are appropriate for a Bank-powers which Congress may fairly consider to be useful to the Bank or the country-then Congress may confer these powers; because the discretion to be exercised in framing the constitution of the Bank belongs to Congress. One man may think the granted powers not indispensable to the particular Bank; another may suppose them injudicious, or injurious; a third may imagine that other powers, if granted in their stead, would be more beneficial; but all these are matters of expediency, about which men may differ; and the power of deciding upon them belongs to Congress.

I again repeat, Sir, that if, for reasons of this kind, the President sees fit to negative a bill, on the ground of its being inexpedient or impolitic, he has a right to do so. But remember, Sir, that we are now on the Constitutional question; remember, that the argument of the President is, that, because powers were given to the Bank by the charter of 1816, which he thinks not necessary, that charter is unconstitutional. Now, Sir, it will hardly be denied, or rather it was not denied or doubted before this message came to us, that, if there was to be a Bank, the powers and duties of that Bank must be prescribed in the law creating it. Nobody but Congress, it has been thought, could grant these powers and privileges, or prescribe their limitations. It is true, indeed, that the message pretty plainly intimates, that the President should have been first consulted, and that he should have had the framing of the bill; but we are not yet accustomed to that order of things in enacting laws, nor do I know a parallel to this claim, thus now brought forward, except that, in some peculiar cases in England, highly affecting the royal prerogatives, the assent of the monarch is necessary, before either the house of peers, or his majesty's faithful commons, are permitted to act upon the subject, or to entertain its consideration. But supposing, Sir, that our accustomed forms and our republican principles are still to be followed, and that a law creating a Bank is, like all other laws, to originate with Congress, and that the President has nothing to do with it, till it is presented for his approval,-then it is clear that the powers and duties of a proposed Bank, and all the terms and conditions annexed to it, must, in the first place, be settled by Congress.

This power, if Constitutional at all, is only Constitutional in the hands of Congress. Any where else, its exercise would be plain usurpation. If, then, the authority to decide what powers ought to be granted to a Bank, belong to Congress, and Congress shall have exercised that power, it would seem little better than absurd to say, that its act, nevertheless, would be unconstitutional and invalid, if, in the opinion of a third party, it had misjudged, on a question of expediency, in the arrangement of details. According to such a mode of reasoning, a mistake in the exercise of jurisdiction takes

away the jurisdiction. If Congress decide right, its decision may stand; if it decide wrong, its decision is nugatory; and whether its decision be right or wrong, another is to judge, although the origi nal power of making the decision must be allowed to be exclu sively in Congress. This is the end to which the argument of the message will conduct its followers.

Sir, in considering the authority of Congress to invest the Bank with the particular powers granted to it, the inquiry is not, and cannot be, how appropriate these powers are, but whether they be at all appropriate; whether they come within the range of a just and honest discretion; whether Congress may fairly esteem them to be necessary. The question is not, Are they the fittest means, the best means, or whether the Bank might not be established without them? But the question is, Are they such as Congress, bona fide, may have regarded as appropriate to the end? If any other rule were to be adopted, nothing could ever be settled. Á law would be constitutional to-day and unconstitutional to-morrow. Its constitutionality would altogether depend upon individual opinion, on a matter of mere expediency. Indeed, such a case as that is now actually before us. Mr. Madison deemed the powers given to the Bank, in its present charter, proper and necessary. He held the Bank, therefore, to be Constitutional. But the present President, not acknowledging that the power of deciding on these points rests with Congress, nor with Congress and the then President, but setting up his own opinions as the standard, declares the law, now in being, unconstitutional, because the powers granted by it are, in his estimation, not necessary and proper. I pray to be informed, Sir, whether, upon similar grounds of reasoning, the President's own scheme for a Bank, if Congress should do so unlikely a thing as to adopt it, would not become unconstitutional also, if it should so happen that his successor should hold his Bank in as light esteem as he holds those established under the auspices of Washington and Madison?

If the reasoning of the message be well founded, it is clear that the charter of the existing Bank is not a law. The Bank has no legal existence; it is not responsible to Government; it has no authority to act; it is incapable of being an agent; the President may treat it as a nullity, to-morrow; withdraw from it all the public deposits, and set afloat all the existing national arrangements It is enough to state these monstrous of revenue and finance. consequences, to show that the doctrine, principles, and pretensions of the message, are entirely inconsistent with a government of laws. If that which Congress has enacted, and the Supreme Court has sanctioned, be not the law of the land, then the reign of law has ceased, and the reign of individual opinion has already begun.

The President, in his commentary on the details of the existing

Bank charter, undertakes to prove that one provision, and another provision, is not necessary and proper; because, as he thinks, the same objects, proposed to be accomplished by them, might have been better attained in another mode; and therefore such provisions are not necessary, and so not warranted by the Constitution. Does not this show, that, according to his own mode of reasoning, his own scheme would not be Constitutional, since another scheme, which probably most people would think a better one, might be substituted for it? Perhaps, in any Bank charter, there may be no provisions which may be justly regarded as absolutely indispensable; since it is probable, that for any of them some others might be substituted. No Bank, therefore, ever could be established; because there never has been, and never could be, any charter, of which every provision should appear to be indispensable, or necessary and proper, in the judgment of every individual. To admit, therefore, that there may be a Constitutional Bank, and yet to contend for such a mode of judging of its provisions and details as the message adopts, involves an absurdity. Any charter which may be framed, may be taken up, and each power conferred by it successively denied, on the ground, that, in regard to each, either no such power is "necessary or proper" in a Bank, or, which is the same thing in effect, some other power might be substituted for it, and supply its place. That can never be necessary, in the sense in which the message understands that term, which may be dispensed with; and it cannot be said that any power may not be dispensed with, if there be some others, which might be substituted for it, and which would accomplish the same end. Therefore, no Bank could ever be Constitutional; because none could be established which should not contain some provisions which might have been omitted, and their place supplied by

others.

Mr. President, I have understood the true and well-established doctrine to be, that, after it has been decided that it is competent for Congress to establish a Bank, then it follows, that it may create such a Bank as it judges, in its discretion, to be best, and invest it with all such power as it may deem fit and suitable; with this limitation, always, that all is to be done in the bona fide execution of the power to create a Bank. If the granted powers are appropriate to the professed end, so that the granting of them cannot be regarded as usurpation of authority by Congress, or an evasion of Constitutional restrictions under color of establishing a Bank, then the charter is Constitutional, whether these powers be thought indispensable by others or not, or whether even Congress itself deemed them absolutely indispensable, or only thought them fit and suitable; or whether they are more or less appropriate to their end. It is enough that they are appropriate; it is enough that they are

suited to produce the effects designed; and no comparison is to be instituted, in order to try their Constitutionality, between them and others which may be suggested. A case, analogous to the present, is found in the Constitutional power of Congress over the mail. The Constitution says no more than that "Congress shall have power to establish post-offices and post-roads ;" and, in the general clause, "all powers necessary and proper" to give effect to this. In the execution of this power, Congress has protected the mail, by providing that robbery of it shall be punished with death. Is this infliction of capital punishment Constitutional? Certainly it is not, unless it be both "proper and necessary." The President may not think it necessary or proper; the law, then, according to the system of reasoning enforced in the message, is of no binding force, and the President may disobey it, and refuse to see it executed.

The truth is, Mr. President, that if the general object, the subject-matter, properly belong to Congress, all its incidents belong to Congress also. If Congress is to establish post-offices and postroads, it may, for that end, adopt one set of regulations or another; and either would be Constitutional. So the details of one Bank are as Constitutional as those of another, if they are confined, fairly and honestly, to the purpose of organizing the institution, and rendering it useful. One Bank is as Constitutional as another Bank. If Congress possess the power to make a Bank, it possesses the power to make it efficient, and competent to produce the good expected from it. It may clothe it with all such power and privileges, not otherwise inconsistent with the Constitution, as may be necessary, in its own judgment, to make it what Government deems it should be. It may confer on it such immunities as may induce individuals to become stockholders, and to furnish the capital; and since the extent of these immunities and privileges is matter of discretion, and matter of opinion, Congress only can decide it, because Congress alone can frame or grant the charter. A charter, thus granted to individuals, becomes a contract with them, upon their compliance with its terms. The Bank becomes an agent, bound to perform certain duties, and entitled to certain stipulated rights and privileges, in compensation for the proper discharge of these duties; and all these stipulations, so long as they are appropriate to the object professed, and not repugnant to any other Constitutional injunction, are entirely within the competency of Congress. And yet, Sir, the message of the President toils through all the common-place topics of monopoly, the right of taxation, the suffering of the poor, and the arrogance of the rich, with as much painful effort, as if one, or another, or all of them, had something to do with the Constitutional question.

What is called the "monopoly " is made the subject of repeat

ed rehearsal, in terms of special complaint. By this "monopoly," I suppose, is understood the restriction contained in the charter, that Congress shall not, during the twenty years, create another Bank. Now, Sir, let me ask, Who would think of creating a Bank, inviting stockholders into it, with large investments, imposing upon it heavy duties, as connected with the Government, receiving some millions of dollars as a bonus, or premium, and yet retaining the power of granting, the next day, another charter, which would destroy the whole value of the first?-If this be an unconstitutional restraint on Congress, the Constitution must be strangely at variance with the dictates both of good sense and sound morals. Did not the first Bank of the United States contain a similar restriction? And have not the States granted Bank charters, with a condition, that if the charter should be accepted, they would not grant others? States have certainly done so; and, in some instances, where no bonus, or premium, was paid at all; but from the mere desire to give effect to the charter, by inducing individuals to accept it and organize the institution. The President declares that this restriction is not necessary to the efficiency of the Bank; but that is the very thing which Congress and his predecessor in office were called on to decide, and which they did decide, when the one passed and the other approved the act. And he has now no more authority to pronounce his judgment on that act than any other individual in society. It is not his province to decide on the Constitutionality of statutes which Congress has passed, and his predecessors approved

There is another sentiment, in this part of the message, which we should hardly have expected to find in a paper which is supposed, whoever may have drawn it up, to have passed under the review of professional characters. The message declares that this limitation to create no other Bank is unconstitutional, because, although Congress may use the discretion vested in them, “they may not limit the discretion of their successors.' This reason is almost too superficial to require an answer. Every one, at all accustomed to the consideration of such subjects, knows that every Congress can bind its successors to the same extent that it can bind itself: the power of Congress is always the same; the authority of law always the same. It is true, we speak of the twentieth Congress, and the twenty-first Congress; but this is only to denote the period of time, or to mark the successive organizations of the House of Representatives under the successive periodical elections of its members. As a politic body, as the legislative power of the Government, Congress is always continuous, always identical. A particular Congress, as we speak of it, for instance, the present Congress,-can no farther restrain itself from doing what it may choose to do at the next session, than it can restrain any succeeding Congress from doing what it may choose.