abominations, to which nothing but that excitement and that rage could ever have reconciled them, remained to poison the joys of their triumph. No doubt, then, the framers of the Constitution abhorred irredeemable paper, and in that sense, were emphatically hard money men. But in no other or stricter sense were they so, and Daniel Webster never said they were.

Why, Sir, do gentlemen forget that our fathers themselves framed a bank charter, before they framed the Constitution? And not only so, but it is rather a curious coincidence, in this relation, that the same pen, or, certainly, the same hand, which gave the last shaping strokes and finishing touches to the Constitution, had a few years previously been employed in making the first plan and original outline of this bank! "That instrument (the Constitution) was written by the fingers which write this letter," said Gouverneur Morris in a letter to Timothy Pickering. The first bank in this country was planned by your humble servant," wrote the same gentleman to Mr. Moss Kent. I refer, I need not say, to the Bank of North America. It was incorporated in 1781 by the Congress of the Confederation. On the application of its President and Directors, the Assembly of Pennsylvania gave it a supplementary charter, in 1782. In 1785, a proposition was brought into that Assembly, precisely parallel to that which has recently agitated the Convention of the same State, to abolish this charter. Upon this occasion, Mr. Morris came to its defence, and wrote an address to the Assembly, going over the whole ground both of contract and of convenience, of justice and of policy. Upon the latter division of the subject he dwelt at great length, examining all the objections which had been raised against the Institution in question. And what were those objections? The same, the same precisely in substance, and many of them almost the same in phraseology, which have been resounding and echoing over the country for the last six years. Let me prove this by stating them.

These objections, said Mr. Morris, are:

"First, that it enables men to trade to their utter ruin by giv ing them the temporary use of money and credit.

"Secondly, that the punctuality required at the banks throws honest men into the hands of usurers.

Thirdly, that the great dividend on bank stock induces moneyed men to buy stock rather than lend on interest.

"Fourthly, that rich foreigners will, for the same reason, become stockholders, so as that all the property will finally vest in them.

Fifthly, that the payments of dividends to foreigners will be a constant drain of specie from the country.

"Sixthly, that the bank facilitates the exportation of coin. "Seventhly, that it injures the circulation of bills of credit. Eighthly, that the wealth and influence of the bank may become dangerous to the government.

"Ninthly, that the directors can obtain unfair advantages in trade for themselves and their friends.

"And tenthly, that it is destructive of that equality which ought to take place in a free country.”

These, Sir, are the objections to a national bank which were agitating the public mind less than two years before the Convention assembled by which the Constitution of the United States was framed,— and these are the objections against which, one, at least, of the principal framers of that Constitution was foremost in defending such a bank. I might go on to show that others of them were associated with him, either directly or indirectly, in its defence. But I have said enough to prove that, though the framers of the Constitution were hard money men and abhorred irredeemable paper, they were by no means ignorant of the nature or insensible to the advantages of banking institutions, or of convertible paper, but that at the very moment when they entered into the Convention of '87, they must all have been fresh in the remembrance, and some of them in the experience also, of a controversy, in which all the benefits and all the dangers of such institutions and of their issues had been considered and discussed, and in which the former had been decided altogether to preponderate over the latter.

But the gentleman next reminds us that a proposition was made in this very Convention, to give Congress the power to charter a bank, and was rejected. The fact is not precisely so, Sir. Or at any rate there is no evidence of any such proposition on the records of the Convention. As far as any document

exists, the proposition which was made and rejected, related only to incorporating canal companies. The evidence that the motion was amended so as to include banks, and finally all other corporations, is entirely traditionary. And the grounds on which the proposition, whatever it was, was rejected, have been widely differed about by those having equal opportunities to know them. Some have affirmed that it was rejected from an unwillingness to confer such a power at all, and others that it was because the power being implied as to all affairs over which a sovereign authority had been granted, it was unnecessary to specify it in any case more particularly. It is plain, Mr. Chairman, that no reliable inference can be drawn from a fact so loosely authenticated, and no inference, especially, so contradictory to the whole tenor of other well-attested and notorious facts which certainly occurred almost immediately afterwards. Has the gentleman from Gloucester never read that in both branches of the first Congress under the new Constitution, and during the first session of that first Congress, I believe, -one amendment among many that were offered to the Constitution, to be subsequently ratified by the people, was this, "That Congress erect no company of merchants with exclusive advantages of commerce" - and that this proposition, too, was rejected? Is not this well-authenticated fact, Sir, a pretty satisfactory set-off to the more doubtful one on which the gentleman has relied? Certainly, it seems

so to me.

But what did this same first Congress do, at a subsequent session? They incorporated a National Bank. Hamilton drew the plan. Was not he a framer of the Constitution? Washington signed the charter. Was not he a framer of the Consti tution?

It has been suggested that Washington's assent to this act was slowly and hesitatingly given, and that a veto-message was actually prepared for him. This veto-message, again, Sir, rests on mere hearsay evidence. But even were it extant among his papers, as it certainly would have been had he attached to it the slightest value or importance, what would it prove, so long as it was not signed, but what we all knew before the untiring activity and exceeding confidence of his anti-bank advisers?

And as to the slow and hesitating assent which he gave to this measure, Washington never gave a quick or hasty assent to any thing. It was not his nature to do so. His reason and not his humor, his conscientious and well-considered judgment, and not any rash and arbitrary will, were the rules and standards of his action. It was by this very slowness and hesitation, that he secured the success of our Revolutionary contest. American Independence could have been achieved by no other qualities in the leader of its armies.

Unus cunctando nobis restituit rem.

And so far from regarding the hesitation which characterized his course as to this national bank as favorable to the cause of those who have suggested it, the whole weight which the suggestion possesses, whatever it is, seems clearly to belong to the other scale. Why, Sir, does it make an opinion less worthy of confidence, that it was slowly and deliberately formed? Does it diminish the value of a decision, that it was pronounced after a full hearing and upon solemn judgment? Does it impair the efficacy of seals and signatures, that they were affixed after many misgivings and with much ceremony? The very reverse of all this, certainly, -and especially where the opinion was formed, the decision pronounced, the signature and seal affixed by a man like Washington. He was not the person to strike nice balances in accounts of conscience or of duty. He was no constitutional casuist. Much less would he ever have given his pen to one side of a question, while his opinion was on the other. When he doubted, he sought sincerely and anxiously to resolve his doubts, and he rarely acted till they were resolved. He summoned councils, he solicited opinions, he insisted on the fullest and freest statements and arguments of the case on both sides, and upon the materials thus obtained he turned and fastened the calm, clear, dispassionate eye of his own powerful judg ment. And then, like the mists before the sun, those doubts were dispelled. And let me add, that he who goes behind the approv ing signature of Washington, to magnify scruples, hesitations, or doubts which were expressed or implied by him before that

signature was given, does great injustice either to his ability or his integrity.

son.

But the charter which he signed was suffered to expire, and after a few years a second charter was signed by James MadiWas not he a framer of the Constitution? Was there any one among those framers more distinguished, any one whose opinion as to what the Constitution was or was intended to be, upon this or any other point, we should rather have had? True, Mr. Madison had originally opposed this measure. True, he had himself once vetoed a national bank charter. And the grounds upon which that veto was based are certainly not a little remarkable, when considered in connection with the pres ent doctrines of the Government and the present condition of the country. They were these, Sir, that the amount of stock to be subscribed would not be sufficient to produce, in favor of the public credit, any considerable or lasting elevation of the market price; that no adequate advantage would arise to the public credit from the subscription of Treasury notes; that the bank would be free from all obligations to coöperate with public measures; and that the bank would commence and conduct its operations under a perpetual obligation to pay its notes in specie! Not a word here about divorces between Bank and State, but objections rather that the alliance between them was not made closer. Not a word about the Government taking care of their business and the people of theirs, but a complaint that there was not enough of coöperation between Government and people to sustain the public credit. And even a suspension of specie payments, instead of being denounced as under all circumstances, immoral and fraudulent, is regarded as so essential, in certain emergencies, to the welfare of the country, that it ought to be allowed and authorized in the very terms of the charter!

But what did Mr. Madison say in this same veto message on the point of the constitutionality of that charter? He declared expressly, Sir, that all question of the constitutional authority of Congress to incorporate a bank, was, "in his opinion, precluded by repeated recognitions, under varied circumstances, of the validity of such an institution, in acts of the legislative, exe