Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v4.djvu/636

620 so usual and so important an instrument for the administration of its finances as that of a bank, is to suppose, what does not coincide with the general tenor and complexion of the Constitution, and what is not agreeable to the impressions that any mere spectator would entertain concerning it. Little less than a prohibitory clause can destroy the strong presumptions which result from the general aspect of the government. Nothing but demonstration should exclude the idea that the power exists. The fact that all the principal commercial nations have made use of trading corporations or companies, for the purpose of external commerce, is a satisfactory proof that the establishment of them is an incident to the regulation of commerce. This other fact, that banks are a usual engine in the administration of national finances, and an ordinary and the most effectual instrument of loans, and one which, in this country, has been found essential, pleads strongly against the supposition that a government, clothed with most of the important prerogatives of sovereignty, in relation to its revenues, its debt, its credit, its defence, its trade, its intercourse with foreign nations, is forbidden to make use of that instrument, as an appendage to its own authority. It has been usual, as an auxiliary test of constitutional authority, to try whether it abridges any preexisting right of any state, or any individual. Each state may still erect as many banks as it pleases: every individual may still carry on the banking business to any extent he pleases. * * *

Surely a bank has more reference to the objects intrusted to the national government than to those left to the care of the state governments. The common defence is decisive in this comparison.

Upon the proceedings of the American colonial assemblies, there existed a double negative or veto—one vested in the royal governor, the other in the king. By the royal governors the right was often exercised, and the king frequently signified his disallowance of acts which had not only passed the colonial assemblies, but even been sanctioned by the governor. This feature was one strongly set forth as a prime grievance, in recounting the injuries and usurpations of the British monarch, in the Declaration of Independence, and its exercise was highly repugnant to the interests of America.

Dr. Franklin, in the Debates of the federal Convention, thus shows the influence of the veto power under the proprietary government of Penn:—