Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/429

1791.] articles received in lieu of a portion of them, which was banished, conferred no substantial benefit on the country. He dwelt on the casualties that banks are subject to.

To be essentially useful in so extensive a country, banks, he said, should be fixed in different parts of the United States; and in this view, the local banks of the several states, he said, could be employed with more advantage than if any other banking system was substituted. Circumstances, in Great Britain, he observed, required that there should be one bank, as the object there is to concentrate the wealth of the country to a point, as the interest of their public debt is all paid in one place. Here a difference in circumstances called for another kind of policy: the public debt is paid in all the different states.

He then expressly denied the power of Congress to establish banks. And this, he said, was not a novel opinion; he had long entertained it. All power, he said, had its limits; those of the general government were ceded from the mass of general power inherent in the people, and were consequently confined within the bounds fixed by their act of cession. The Constitution was this act; and to warrant Congress in exercising the power, the grant of it should be pointed out in that instrument. This, he said, had not been done; he presumed it could not be done. If we ventured to construe the Constitution, such construction only was admissible, as it carefully preserved entire the idea on which that Constitution is founded.

He adverted to the clauses in the Constitution which had been adduced as conveying this power of incorporation. He said he could not find it in that of laying taxes. He presumed it was impossible to deduce it from the power given to Congress to provide for the general welfare. If it is admitted that the right exists there, every guard set to the powers of the Constitution is broken down, and the limitations become nugatory.

The present Congress, it was said, had all the powers of the old Confederation, and more. Under the old government a bank had been established; and thence it was deduced that the present legislature had indubitably that power. The exigencies of government were such, he answered, under the old Confederation, as to justify almost any infraction of parchment rights; but the old Congress were conscious they had not every power necessary for the complete establishment of a bank, and recommended to the individual states to make sundry regulations for the complete establishment of the institution.

To exercise the power included in the bill was an infringement on the rights of the several states; for they could establish banks within their respective jurisdictions, and prohibit the establishment of any others. A law existed in one of the states prohibitory of cash notes of hand, payable on demand. The power of making such a law could not, he presumed, be denied to the states; and if this was granted, and such laws were in force, it certainly would effectually exclude the establishment of a bank.

This power of establishing a bank had been, he said, deduced from the right, granted in the Constitution, of borrowing money; but this, he conceived, was not a bill to borrow money. It was said that Congress had not only this power to borrow money, but to enable people to lend. In answer to this, he observed that, if Congress had a right to enable those people to lend, who are willing, but not able, it might be said that they have a right to compel those to lend, who were able, and not willing.