The Senator denounces the present bill not only as unconstitutional, but as the most enormous stretch of power he has ever known to be attempted. I am glad to find that the Senator has become the advocate of a strict construction of the Constitution, and an enemy to the exercise of doubtful powers. In this particular we agree. And I am much pleased to learn from himself that he does not concur with the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Webster] in deriving power over the paper currency of the country from the clauses in the Constitution authorizing Congress to coin money and regulate commerce. By abandoning this latitudinarian construction, however, he virtually surrenders up the power to create a national bank. The Senator shakes his head, but I shall endeavor to prove that this is the dilemma in which he has placed himself. On what ground did the Supreme Court decide the bank to be constitutional? It was because Congress, possessing the express power to levy and collect taxes for the purpose of paying the debts of the United States, might create a bank by implication, if they believed it to be a necessary agent in the execution of this taxing power. Now will any man, at this day, pretend that the taxes of the Government cannot be collected, and its debts paid, without the agency of such a bank? I think not. It must have been for the purpose of extricating himself from this dilemma, and finding a power somewhere else to establish a bank, that the Senator from Massachusetts asserted a general power in Congress to create and regulate the paper currency of the country, and derived it from the coining and commercial clauses in the Constitution. I should be pleased always to agree with the Senator from Kentucky, and I am glad that we unite in denying the power claimed by the Senator from Massachusetts.
In regard to the power to pass this bill, I shall state the proposition of the Senator from Kentucky as fairly as I can. He says that the Bank of the United States is a corporation created by a sovereign State, and that this bill, intended to operate upon such a corporation, is wholly unconstitutional and subversive of State rights. Now, sir, if the bill were intended to act upon the bank, as a Pennsylvania corporation, I should abandon the argument. The president and directors of this bank sustain two characters, totally separate and distinct from each other. They are officers of the Pennsylvania Bank; and in that character they are beyond our control. But they have voluntarily assumed another character, by becoming assignees and trustees of the old bank chartered by Congress, for the purpose of winding up its concerns; and it is in this character, and this alone, that we have any jurisdiction over them. We do not attempt to interfere with the bank as a corporation of the State of Pennsylvania. No, sir; we only undertake to operate upon it as the assignee of our old bank. The gentleman asked if the old bank had assigned its property to individual trustees, could we pass any law to compel these trustees to wind up its concerns? Most certainly we could; because, no matter into whose hands the duty of winding up our bank may have passed, we should possess the power to compel a performance of that duty. This power of Congress can never be evaded or destroyed by any transfer to trustees made by officers created by our own law, whether the transfer be legal or illegal. Our power attaches to such trustees, and will continue until they shall have closed the concerns of the bank.
The gentleman says that the power to create a bank is one implication, and that to wind it up is a second implication, and to pass this bill would be piling implication upon implication, like Pelion upon Ossa, which cannot be done under the Constitution. Now, sir, to what absurdities does not this argument lead? By implication you can create a bank for a limited period, which you cannot destroy after that period has expired. Your creature, the term of whose existence you have foreordained, becomes eternal in defiance of your power. And this because you cannot add implication to implication. The gentleman asks where do you find this winding up power in the Constitution? I answer, wherever he finds the creating power. The one necessarily results from the other. If not, when you call a bank into existence, its charter, although limited to a few years, becomes in fact perpetual. You cannot create that which you cannot destroy, after it has lived its appointed time.
As to Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Brockenbrough—nobody pretends you can touch them or their banks by your law. The bill is confined to your own agents, acting under your own law, and therefore subject to your own jurisdiction. These agents are as much yours for the purpose proposed by the bill, as the president and directors of the old bank would have been. There is a perfect privity, as the lawyers would say, between the two; nay, there is a perfect identity. It is no argument to say that the old bank is dead; but even this is not the fact. We have extended its existence at the present session, without a dissenting voice, in either House, for the purpose of prosecuting and defending its suits, and it has always continued to elect a president and board of directors.
The Senator has asked, if the Bank of England or any of the banks in Canada had ceased to exist, and their agents in this country should reissue their old notes, whether we would claim the power of punishing them for that cause. This question, in my opinion, presents the only instance of haste and want of sufficient reflection in the gentleman’s speech. There is no analogy between the two cases. Congress never created the Bank of England, nor any bank in Canada, and therefore Congress can never claim any power to close their concerns. We assert no power except over our own bank and its trustees. We cannot interfere with the banks of the several States, much less with those of a foreign country.
The Senator thinks he has caught me in a palpable inconsistency. He says I first condemned the expansion of the banks in this country, and afterwards condemned the contraction of the Bank of England. I might have done so, in the special case of the refusal of that bank to extend its accustomed credits to the American houses, without any inconsistency; but I expressed no opinion of my own upon the subject. In stating the causes which produced the suspension of specie payments in the United States, I said that this act of the Bank of England had been condemned in that country both by their statesmen and men of business. I passed no censure whatever on the conduct of that bank, and the gentleman, therefore, need not have reminded me that it would but little regard my censure. I am content to confine my humble exertions to our own institutions at home, leaving to other gentlemen the glory of having South America on one side of the Atlantic and Greece on the other, shouting hosannas in their praise.
The gentleman asks, with a triumphant air, where are England and France at the present moment? Are they not prosperous, whilst we are embarrassed? In regard to England, I answer that money there is plenty and cheap; and this simply because business has been paralyzed by the great convulsion under which we have both suffered; and it is the capital which has been thrown out of active employment, from this very cause, which is now seeking investment at a low rate of interest. The commerce and trade of England have fallen off to such an extent that Parliament has been obliged to borrow two millions sterling to meet the current expenses of the Government. In this particular they are placed in a similar situation with ourselves. And yet after all the light which has been shed upon this subject, the gentleman still attributes that convulsion which has shaken the commercial world to its centre, to the removal of the deposits, the Specie Circular, and General Jackson.
I have but lately turned prophet; and there has been such poor success in that line on this side of the House, that I have almost determined to abandon the trade forever. In one respect I resemble the false prophets of old, because they prophesied nothing but good. This may probably result from my sanguine temperament, and my desire to look upon the bright side of human affairs. In my prophetic vision I have therefore never, like the gentleman, denounced war, pestilence, and famine against the country.
The gentleman strongly condemns the members of the present cabinet. I am willing to accord to the President the privilege of selecting his own agents and advisers, without any interference on my part. When he, or they, shall recommend measures of which I disapprove, I shall exercise my right of opposing them as an independent Senator. I do not believe that any evidence can be produced that the President and his cabinet are opposed to the credit system of the country. If this should ever appear, it will then be time enough for me to denounce such a policy. My instructions have prevented me from expressing my views at length upon this subject. They contain nothing, however, which forbid me from saying, nay I am only expressing their sentiment when I assert, that a separation of the business of the Government from that of the banks would be one of the greatest blessings which could be conferred on the country. In releasing the banks from the Government, and the Government from the banks, the interests of both parties would be promoted, mutual jealousies and recriminations would be ended, and the currency and business of the country would cease to be involved in the perpetual struggles which exist for political power.
I might say much more in reply to the gentleman, but I forbear.