Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/154

 146 "In all questions of this nature, the practice of mankind ought to have great weight against the theories of individuals. The fact, for instance, 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 an 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 pre-existing right of any state, or any individual. The proposed measure will stand the most severe examination on this point. 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. Another criterion may be this; whether the institution or thing has a more direct relation, as to its uses, to the objects of the reserved powers of the state government, than to those of the powers delegated by the United States? This rule, indeed, is less precise, than the former; but it may still serve as some guide. Surely, a bank has more reference to the objects entrusted to the national government, than to those left to the care of the state governments. The common defence is decisive in this comparison." 1 Hamilton's Works, 138 to 154. private intentions of the framers. They adopted it upon its own clear import, upon its own naked text. Nothing is more common, than for a law to effect more or less, than the intention of the persons, who framed it; and it must be judged of by its words and sense, and not by any private intentions of members of the legislature.

§ 1264. In regard to the faculties of the bank, if congress could constitutionally create it, they might confer on it such faculties and powers, as were fit to make it an appropriate means for fiscal operations. They had a right to adapt it in the best manner to its end. No one can pretend, that its having the faculty