Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/403

Rh parties seek for the chartering power. There, although a power in Congress, to hestow an exclusive banking charter on all the citizens of one state, could not possibly be found, all parties have found a power to bestow it on a few of them, or on a few aliens. And under this construction of the words of constitutions, not containing a single word relating to banking, people are fined, hanged and imprisoned with the common consent of judges, juries and lawyers, out of imitation to the English stockjobbing system. If legislatures can destroy political law or constitutions, by any mode not verbally prohibited, the exclusive right of the people to pronounce this law, or to establish constitutions, is a shadow; as a specification of every mode for destroying constitutions bylaw, is impossible. In this right consists their sovereignty. The people may call as many conventions as they please for fixing the principles of their government, but these principles can never be fixed, if legislatures can destroy them in any mode not verbally prohibited. All our constitutions, recognise and labour to fortify this right of the people; therefore an indirect legislative mode of destroying it, must be equally unconstitutional, with a positive law for that purpose.

If banking charters, like all other modes for measuring wealth by law, w ill change the nature and principles of governments, they are as unconstitutional, and as subversive of the sovereignty of the people, as a law for creating a king or an order of nobles. The five millions at this time taken annually from the people by these instruments, have already begotten a political power able to influence governments. This magnet for attracting power, grows daily. Anticipate its effects, by contrasting the accumulation it may end in, with an equal division of property. Would the political effects of the two measures be the same? Would these contraries generate contrary forms of government? If they would, then both are in substance, political or constitutional law, and legislatures have as little right to pass banking laws;