Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/506

490 it would be equally proper, under the popular idea of giving their election to the people, to divide the states into districts for the choice of senators, as was proposed in the Convention, and give to Congress the control over their election also. If the system be once broken in upon in this respect, the other measure will naturally follow, and we shall then have what was so much dreaded by those who have gone before us, and what he feared would be so much regretted by those who come after,—a completely consolidated government, a government in which the state governments would be no otherwise known or felt than as it became necessary to control them. To all this Mr. Van Buren was opposed.

At the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, it was a question of much speculation and discussion, which of the two governments would be most in danger from the accumulation of influence by the operation of the powers distributed by the Constitution. That discussion was founded on the assumption that they were, in several respects, rival powers, and that such powers would always be found in collision. The best lights which could be thrown upon the subject were derived from the examples afforded by the fates of several of the governments of the old world, which were deemed to be, in some respects, similar to ours. But the governments in question having operated upon, and been administered by, people whose habits, characters, tempers, and conditions, were essentially different from ours, the inferences to be derived from that source were, at best, unsatisfactory. Mr. Van Buren thought that experience—the only unerring criterion by which matters of this description could be tested—had settled for us the general point of the operation of the powers conferred by the Constitution upon the relative strength and influence of the respective governments. It was, in his judgment, susceptible of entire demonstration, that the Federal Constitution had worked a gradual, if not an undue, increase of the strength and control of the general government, and a correspondent reduction of the influence, and, consequently, of the respectability, of the state governments.



, May 1, 1826.

Mr. HAYNE. The first question which presents itself for consideration is, the necessity of a bankrupt law. It is asked "whether the laws of the states, on this subject, are not adequate to the object." I answer, decidedly and unequivocally, that there exists the most pressing necessity for now establishing "uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcy through out the United States;" and that the laws of the states, on this subject, are inefficient, unjust, and ruinous in their operation. In the remarks I am about to make on this branch of the subject, I wish to be distinctly understood as confining my observations to the effect of the state insolvent laws on persons concerned in trade. It is from the operation of these laws on the commerce of the country that those evils flow which demand a speedy and effectual remedy.

There now exist, in the several states of this Union, upwards of twenty distinct systems of bankruptcy, or insolvency, each differing from all the rest in almost every provision intended to give security to the creditor or relief to the debtor; differing in every thing which touches the rights and remedies of the one, or the duties and liabilities of the other.

By the laws of some of the states, debtors cannot be arrested either on