Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/408

 supplementary one, and it might have been appropriated to any purpose. No interest was paid after 1840. The first bonds which bore coupons fell due March 1, 1841; but $500,000 of bonds had been issued earlier, which bore no coupons, only a stipulation of interest on their face. An act was passed March 4, 1848, which appropriated the sinking fund to coupons.

A payment of interest on Planters' Bank bonds was made in January, 1859, to the amount of $101,500. It appears that some holders of coupons found out that just that sum was in the sinking fund available under the law, as interpreted in this decision. They applied for it and the Attorney-general advised the Auditor that the claim should be complied with. The only other payment of the same kind that was ever made was $20, later in the same year.

An act was passed March 16, 1852, that at the following presidential election, a vote should be taken, yes or no, on the question: "Will you submit to a direct tax for the payment of the Planters' Bank bonds issued by this State, on account of the Planters' Bank of the State of Mississippi?"

The law provided that unless a majority of all the votes on this question, at the presidential election, should be "No," it should be an instruction to the Legislature to provide for the payment of the bonds. The affirmative vote was 12,703; the negative, 24,487; the non-voting, counted as affirmative, 7,234; making the majority against the special tax, 4,550.

In Campell versus the Union Bank it was held that the supplementary charter of that bank only modified and extended the original one and that it did not essentially alter it. Under the above mentioned law of 1843, suit having been brought on a bond, the Chancellor decided that "the bond sued on was a legal and valid obligation against the State, and had not been issued in violation of the law and Constitution, and he rendered a final decree against the State for the principal and interest of the bond." On appeal the Supreme Court decided, in 1853, that no provision of the supplementary charter attempted directly to pledge the faith of the State in violation of the State Constitution. The State was not a debtor to the corporation for the bonds which never were delivered to it. The Legislature has power to subscribe to the capital of banks. The requirement of a repeated vote at a second session does not apply to that power; neither did the Constitution ever mean to give an appeal to the people or a right of veto in the people on acts of the Legislature for borrowing money. A double voted law has no extra sanctity. It can be repealed before rights vest under it. "The supplementary charter of the bank did not authorize the issuance of State bonds by which a debt could be imposed upon the State, and no attempt was made by that act to pledge the faith of the State for the payment of a loan or debt; nor did it attempt a renewal of the pledge contained in the original charter of the bank." The supplementary act was not void for lack of a