Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/150

 touched the people Of Kentucky to the quick. The man in occupation of land was a voter, neighbor, friend, relative. By the carelessness of Virginia and of the settlers the titles were often disputed. The Legislature represented the occupiers. The public men sought the favor of the same. An occupier, if ousted, presented a real object of commiseration, for he had lost the labor of years. Still the law, right, and justice of the case might be all against him, and his troubles might be all his own fault.

The laws of Kentucky, for twenty-five years, aimed to enlarge the rights of the occupying claimant against the successful contestant.

In Green versus Biddle those laws were declared void because they were in violation of the compact with Virginia at the separation. All efforts were exhausted to get a reversal of this decision. In Bodley versus Gaither (1825), the Supreme Court of the State refused to be controlled by the decision in Green versus Biddle. Inasmuch as the Supreme Court of the United States, in Hawkins versus Barney's Lessee (1831), very materially modified the ruling in Green versus Biddle, the Kentucky State rights men could claim to have been the champions of justice, truth, and right. The connection between the stay laws and the banking system has already been shown.

The Kentuckians were alarmed at the course of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. They anticipated the effect on their bank and relief system, and they went to meet the inferences hostile to their pet measures, which seemed to flow directly from the law as expounded. Thus a clash between the Legislature and the judiciary, and another between the federal and State authorities, lay in the relief system of Kentucky.

This subject, in all its length and breadth, was opened by R. M. Johnson in the Senate of the United States, January 14, 1822. The document is, like many others which were prepared in Kentucky at this time, and in connection with these measures, very ably written. It must have been prepared with great care in advance, so that its origin goes back to some time early in 1821, and soon after the decision in Green versus Biddle. On the points which now most immediately interest us he said: "I know of no clause in the federal Constitution that gives the power to the judiciary of declaring the laws and Constitution of a State repugnant to the Constitution of the United States and therefore null and void." "No State shall emit bills of credit. This prohibition has not yet produced collision, but it is fairly to be presumed from the principles established by other acts of adjudication that, if the measures of certain States relative to banks were brought before the Courts of the United States, they would be declared unconstitutional and void, nor would it be any matter of surprise should the supreme judiciary yet, by such a decision, obtain control over the policy of a whole community, relative to a circulating medium for any special and necessary purposes, though it might not be pretended that such currency was made a legal tender. Kentucky has incorporated a bank for necessary purposes. The crisis of the country