Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/434

418 might be reasonably expected from an efficient government entirely frustrated.

Mr. LAWRENCE. The principles of the government, and ends of the Constitution, he remarked, were expressed in its preamble. It is established for the common defence and general welfare. The body of that instrument contained provisions the best adapted to the intention of those principles and attainment of those ends. To these ends, principles, and provisions, Congress was to have, he conceived, a constant eye; and then, by the sweeping clause, they were vested with the powers to carry the ends into execution.

Mr. JACKSON. From the power given the general government of making all necessary laws concerning the property of the United States, a right to establish a national bank had been deduced; and it was asked if bank notes were not property. He said they were a property of a peculiar nature. They were not property as well as an ox or an ass; so they could not be taxed.

It had been asked whether Congress could not establish a bank within the ten miles square, granted to the general government for the permanent residence of the federal legislature. Congress could not, because they had no authority to force the circulation of this paper beyond the limits of the ten miles. The fiscal administration of the Union was said to be vested in Congress. But this did not authorize their adoption of any measures they should think fit for the regulation of the finances. The very Constitution which granted these fiscal powers restricted them by particular clauses; for example, Congress could not without control lay a poll tax, and could not, in any shape, impose duties on exports; yet they were undoubtedly fiscal operations.

Gentlemen, he said, had deduced this power from various parts of the Constitution. The preamble and context had been mentioned; the clause that provides for laying taxes had been particularly dwelt upon; but surely the bill before the house did neither lay an excise, direct tax, or any other, and could, therefore, not come within the meaning of the clause.

Mr. BOUDINOT. But gentlemen say that the Constitution does not expressly warrant the establishment of such a corporation. If, by expressly express words are meant, it is agreed that there are no express words; and this is the case with most of the powers exercised by Congress; for if the doctrine of necessary implication is rejected, he did not see what the supreme legislature of the Union could do in that character; if this power is not clearly given in the Constitution by necessary implication, then it is a necessary end proposed and directed, while the common and useful necessary means to attain that end are refused, or at least not granted. Mr. Boudinot was firmly of opinion that the national bank was the necessary means, without which the end could not be obtained.

Mr. STONE thought that the friends of the bill were not willing to confine themselves to such means as were necessary and proper, but had extended their views to those convenient and agreeable. If, in the plan before the house, he said, a provision had been made to secure a certainty that money could be procured by the government on loan from this bank, there would be more plausibility, he thought, in urging its establishment by a construction of the power of borrowing money. But the bank could, and, whenever it was their interest, certainly would, refuse lending to government. If the power, in this case, was deduced by implication, and was exercised because it was thought necessary and proper, it might be