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480 believe that such was the Constitution. He therefore objected to the constitutional power of Congress to pass the section referred to. He had before said that he rose to explain, not to discuss, and he would not depart from the course he had marked out for himself. He would therefore only add, that, in his judgment, the provision contained in the 93d section was not within the reasons which induced the framers of the Constitution to vest this power of establishing uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies in Congress; that it was a power which never ought to be, or to have been, vested in Congress; that it could only be well and successfully executed by the states, where those who made the Constitution had left it; that its exercise would operate most injuriously upon the system which governed the Union and the states separately: those mischiefs would, among other things, consist in an injurious extension of the patronage of the federal government, and an insupportable enlargement of the range of its judicial power.



February 14, 1826.

Mr. BRANCH perfectly coincided with the gentleman from Tennessee, (Mr. White.) Doubting of the constitutional right of the United States to cut roads and canals through he states, he had hitherto abstained from exercising it; but as regarded the territory, the objection did not seem to exist; for not only had Congress the right to make this appropriation for a road through the Indian country, acquired by treaty before it came into the Union, but it was an obligation on the general government to complete the work it had commenced, and he had therefore voted for it.

Mr. ROWAN. In the general government, they were, Mr. R. said, to look into the Constitution for all the power they possessed. There was no such power given in the Constitution; and he believed, with deference to the opinion entertained, that to convey the exercise of such a power was incompatible with what was the acknowledged power of the states. There was no power given to expend money in roads and canals in the states; there was no such power specifically given to the United States; and when once it was settled in this house that power could be derived to this government by construction, you have discovered the means by which the whole power of a state might be frittered down and annihilated.



, March, 1826.

Mr. BERRIEN. By the Constitution, the President is authorized to nominate, and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint, ambassadors, and other public ministers and consuls, judges of the supreme courts, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not therein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law. Now, it is plain that the appointing power does not include the power to create the office; in other words, that the office to which the appointee is nominated must be previously created by law. If an appointment be to an office to be exercised within the limits of the United States or its territories, it must be to one which exists, and has been created by the municipal laws of the United States. If to an office