Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/160

 The

Vol. XIX.

Green

No. 3

JAMES

Bag

BOSTON

WILSON — NATION

March, 1907

BUILDER1

By Lucien Hugh Alexander PART III DEVOTION to private practice and service as Advocate General for France by no means occupied all of Wilson's energies during the years immediately fol lowing his retirement from Congress in 1777. In 1773 he had been elected Professor of English Literature in the College of Phila delphia, afterwards the University of Pennsylvania, and he held this chair until 1779, when he became a trustee of the University. As such he continued to serve during the remainder of his life, with such associates as Benjamin Franklin, Governor Thomas Mifflin, Bishop White, and Francis Hopkinson. During a period of ten years he fought vigorously in the forum of the law for the legal rights of the institution, for in 1779 an attempt was made by the party in power in Pennsylvania to confiscate its estates and to amend and alter the charter. Wilson was eventually successful, and secured the adoption of an act in 1789, branding the attempt to rob the University of her rights and privileges as "repugnant to justice, a violation of the Constitution of this Commonwealth and dangerous in its precedent to all incorporated bodies." This victory, due entirely to Wilson's superior reasoning powers, was won on the same line of argument which nearly a third of a century later enabled Webster to win the Dartmouth College case. Commencing in 1779 Wilson maintained an active correspondence, often in cipher, with the American Commissioners to France, and, among his other activities, devoted 1 Continued from the February Number.

himself to a study of finance. He was in search of a remedy for the instability of the currency which had resulted from the emission by Congress of millions in paper money, with which to pay the troops and carry on the war. He became convinced that a national bank was a necessity, and a manuscript copy of a plan for such a bank, dated January 25th, 1780, is among the Wilsonia in the archives of the His torical Society of Pennsylvania, as also extensive notes and "Observations on Finance." Among these papers is a "plan for establishing the Bank of the United States," dated May 26th, 1781, also various papers concerning the Bank of North America, and a draft of a "Petition for a Second Bank." Again we find notes "on the case of the two banks," as well as others entitled "Considerations on the Bank," and "Case of the bank and remarks concerning banks and banking," also on "Progression of Society and improvement in the United States and Pennsylvania, particularly with reference to public credit and bank credit," etc. He was closely associated with Robert Morris in organizing the Bank of North America, of which he was appointed a Director by Congress on December 31, 1 781, during the period he was not a dele gate. He became counsel for the bank, as he already was for Morris. Ever after in his speeches, when questions of finance were under discussion, he was an earnest advo cate of a sound currency and against the repudiation of the obligations of state or nation. Indeed, he became an authority in