Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/635

1791.] alleged to include the right of incorporating a bank. 1. It does not appear susceptible of a doubt, that, if Congress had thought proper to provide, in the collection law, that the bonds, to be given for the duties, should be given to the collector of the District A, or B, as the case might require, to inure to him and his successors in office, in trust for the United States, it would have been consistent with the Constitution to make such an arrangement. And yet this, it is conceived, would amount to an incorporation. 2. It is not an unusual expedient of taxation to form particular branches of revenue; that is, to sell or mortgage the product of them for certain definite, sums, leaving the collection to the parties to whom they are mortgaged or sold. There are even examples of this in the United States. Suppose that there was any particular branch of revenue which it was manifestly expedient to place on this footing and there were a number of persons willing to engage with the government, upon condition that they should be incorporated, and the funds vested in them, as well for their greater safety as for the more convenient recovery and management of the taxes; is it supposable that there could be any constitutional obstacle to the measure? It is presumed that there could be none. It is certainly a mode of collection which it would be in the discretion of the government to adopt, though the circumstances must be very extraordinary that would induce the secretary to think it expedient. 3. Suppose a new and unexplored branch of trade should present itself with some foreign country; suppose it was manliest that to undertake it with advantage required a union of the capitals of a number of individuals, and that those individuals would not be disposed to embark without an incorporation, as well to obviate the consequences of a private partnership, which makes every individual liable in his whole estate for the debts of the company to their utmost extent, as for the more convenient management of the business; what reason can there be to doubt that the national government would have a constitutional right to institute and incorporate such a company.? None. They possess a general authority to regulate trade with foreign countries. This is a mean which has been practised to that end by all the principal commercial nations, who have trading companies to this day, which have subsisted for centuries. Why may not the United States constitutionally employ the means usual in other countries for attaining the ends intrusted to them? A power to make all needful rules and regulations concerning territory has been construed to mean a power to erect a government. A power to regulate trade is a power to make all needful rules and regulations concerning trade. Why may it, not, then, include that of erecting a trading company, as well as in other cases to erect a government?

It is remarkable that the state conventions, who have proposed amendments in relation to this point, have, most, if not all of them, expressed themselves nearly thus: Congress shall not giant monopolies, nor erect any company with exclusive advantages of commerce! Thus at the same time expressing their sense that the power to erect trading companies, or corporations, was inherent in Congress, and objecting to it no further than as to the grant of exclusive privileges. The secretary entertains all the doubts which prevail concerning the utility of such companies; but he cannot fashion to his own mind a reason to induce a doubt that there is a constitutional authority in the United States to establish them. If such a reason were demanded, none could be given, unless it were this—that Congress cannot erect a corporation; which would be no better than to say they cannot do it because they cannot do it; first presuming an inability without reason, and then assigning that inability as the cause of itself The very general power of laying and collecting taxes, and appropriating their proceeds; that of borrowing money indefinitely; that of coining money and regulating foreign coins; that of making all needful rules and regulations respecting the property of the United States;—these powers combined, as well as the reason and nature of the thing, speak strongly this language—that it is the manifest design and scope of the Constitution to vest in Congress all the powers requisite to the effectual administration of the finances of the United States. As far as concerns this object, there appears to be no parsimony of power.

To suppose, then, that the government is precluded from the employment of