Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/146

 138 would become obvious, if the place, where the fund to he set apart was kept, should be made a receptacle of the monies of all other persons, who should incline to deposit them there for safe keeping-; and would become still more so, if the officers, charged with the direction of the fund were authorized to make discounts at the usual rate of interest, upon good security. To deny the power of the government to add this ingredient to the plan, would be to refine away all government. A further process will still more clearly illustrate the point. Suppose, when the species of bank, which has been described, was about to be instituted, it were to be urged, that in order to secure to it a due degree of confidence, the fund ought not only to be set apart and appropriated generally, but ought to be specifically vested in the officers, who were to have the direction of it, and in their successors in office, to the end, that it might acquire the character of private property, incapable of being resumed without a violation of the sanction, by which the rights of property are protected; and occasioning more serious and general alarm: the apprehension of which might operate as a check upon the government. Such a proposition might be opposed by arguments against the expediency of it, or the solidity of the reason assigned for it; but it is not conceivable, what could be urged against its constitutionality. And yet such a disposition of the thing would amount to the erection of a corporation; for the true definition of a corporation seems to be this: It is a legal person, or a person created by act of law; consisting of one or more natural persons, authorized to hold property or a franchise in succession, in a legal, as contradistinguished from a natural capacity. Let the illustration proceed a step further. Suppose a bank, of the nature, which has been described, without or with incorporation, had been instituted, and that experience had evinced, us it probably would, that being wholly under a public direction, it possessed not the confidence requisite to the credit of its bills. Suppose also, that by some of those adverse conjunctures, which occasionally attend nations, there had been a very great drain of the specie of the country, so as not only to cause general distress for want of an adequate medium of circulation; but to produce, in consequence of that circumstance, considerable defalcations in the public revenues. Suppose, also, that there was no bank instituted in any state; in such a posture of things, would it not be most manifest, that the incorporation of a bank, like that proposed by the bill, would be a measure immediately relative to the effectual collection of the taxes, members. As far as any document exists, it specifies only canals. If this proves any thing, it proves no more, than that it was thought inexpedient to give a power to