APRIL 10, 1826.] The Judicial System. [SENATE. The must, from its nature, and the nature of man, be exerted the Federal Judiciary, or any other means, the States within a limited sphere. To be efficient, it must be con-hall have been destroyed, or reduced to consolidation, fluent; to be beneficial, it must be harmonious. But there Their condition will be even worse: for the machinery of is a territorial extent, beyond which the People cannot the State Governments, which were formed by the will mingle sympathy and sentiment-beyond which, that con- of the People, to suit their wants, will be employed as fluence and compaction of the People's will, which is ne- the coverts and conduits of oppression. Those corporate cessary to their liberty and their confort, is impracticable devices, by which the refreshing streams of public will -beyond which, if its confluence were even practicable, its were conducted to the vine and the fig-tree, under the harmonious interfluence is denied by physical, and, of course, comfortable shade of which every citizen sat, when there invincible causes. The climate and the soil, occupied by was none in all the land to make him afraid, will be organs any People, have a powerful influence upon the complex- through which official tyranny and misrule will inflict fear ion of their will. The same climate, and the same kind and misery upon the once happy abodes of peace, securiof soil, produce substantially the same kind of pursuits, ty, and comfort; and for this there is no remedy, while the the same customs, habits, and manners; and, of course, dominion of the despot retains its territorial extent. the same complexion of will. If they occupy the sea- only remedy is, in cutting the continent up into Governboard, they are commercial, as well as agricultural, (un-ments, no one of which will be too large for the energetic less the soil forbids agriculture,) and those pursuits acco- circulation of the governing will of the People. In that modate themselves to each other by the kindliest recipro- way, they may establish and maintain their freedom, until cation of their respective facilities. If they occupy the they are construed by their functionaries out of their right bosom of a continent, their pursuits are less diversified, to govern themselves. and their habits and manners more simple; because, the Mr. President: there is not any thing beneath the sun climate has been uninterrupted in the concoction of their but mind and matter: one or the other of those two subwill, by the interference of the ocean. But, whether instances must govern. Matter cannot; mind, of course, the bosom of a continent, or on the margin of the ocean, they can only be free to the extent in which they can exat their mingled will, in the exclusive management of their own interior concerns. Upon this theory, Mr. President, the States of this Union should be maintained, with their powers undiminished from any quarter. The States are happily suited, in their territorial dimensions, to the practicable exertion of the confluent will of the People who compose them, in the enaction of laws for the regulation of their own concerns, suited not only in their dimensions to compaction of will, but to those physical causes which, by producing sameness, give strength to that compaction. must. And the question must always be, whether the will of all, of a few, or of one, shail govern. The People can only govern by their united will, when they are so situated as to be able to unite their will for that purpose. When that is the case, their happiness is in their own power: for the power of the united will of the People of a State is almost indefinite. In England, when the will of the People has, through the Representative principle, been employed as the governing force, it has, though encumbered with rotten boroughs and with royalty, achieved wonders. It has secured to the People as much happiness and liberty as were compatible with their condition and form of government. Is this theory illusive? Is it not verified by the history In Rome, in Greece, and wherever else the People have of civil societies, in all ages, and in all countries? What been free, they have been happy and powerful while their instance, Mr. President, does history furnish, of a free Go- freedom continued. But, in those places, and wherever vernment covering a great extent of territory? Has free-else, in all time past, freedom has been found, it has been dom ever been the entire occupant of a continent, or of a found in the possession of a People occupying a compagreat portion of a continent? No, sir; entire continents ratively small territory. are the property of despots; and, of course, the abodes of While, therefore, the States can maintain the free and slavery and wretchedness: and that, not because the Peo- unfettered exercise of their own will, in the management ple are less fond of freedom than the People within more of their own interior concerns-while the Federal Governcircumscribed limits: for the love of liberty is natural to ment will be content to exercise the powers conceded to man-but because of the impracticability, resulting from it by the States, in the Constitution of the United States, territorial extent, combined with physical causes, of pro-and leave to the States, respectively, the exercise of their ducing and maintaining in a lively and active condition, will as sovereigns in the regulation of their internal polity, that concert, that compaction of will, in which alone con- the People of the States will be free and happy; and the sists the power which is liberty; in which alone consists States will be strong in the vindication of the rights of the the liberty which is power. For, I repeat that liberty is Union, in proportion to the freedom and happiness of their power in that sense only in which power is liberty. citizens. Their strength, upon an emergency, will be the strength of giants refreshed by sleep. The Government of a continent must be, of physical necessity, a despotism. It cannot be even a monarchy. And, Mr. President, permit me to ask if it is not more And why? Simply because the will of the People cannot in accordance with the nature of our complex Governcirculate in volume, actively and wholesomely; that is, in ment, that the Union should depend upon the States for compact confluence throughout the mass. It cannot be its vigor, than that the States should look to the Union for confided in, farther than its effects can be seen and felt. their strength. Docs not the theory of our Government They cannot be seen and felt throughout. Its circulation enjoin that we should look rather to the good of the whole, becomes languid; stagnancy succeeds to languor, apathy by taking special care of the parts, than that we should to both. Sensation usurps the place of intellection, and look to the good of the parts, by taking special care of the fear succeeds to the place of volition, and becomes the whole? Can we hesitate upon this question, when we principle and the power of the Government. The People consider that the liberty and prosperity of every citizen is cease to govern themselves by the power of their own in the exclusive keeping of his State, and not of the will, and permit the despot to govern them by the power Union? That the citizens owe their happiness to their of their own fears. He keeps up their fears; and exacts respective States, and derive their liberty from them? their obedience by employing, coercively, the physical That it is in the States that patriotism, to whatever extent force of the extremes against each other. He keeps it may exist, must be found? It is in the States, and unevery portion in awe by the force of the whole, and the der their protection alone, that the family altars are rearwhole by the force of every portion. ed, and the family fire-sides consecrated by family entiearSuch, Mr. President, must be the condition of the Peo-ments; and that it is under the protecting toleration of the ple of these States, when, through the instrumentality of States that temples are erected to the living Gad, and SENATE.] The Judicial System. [APRIL 10, 1826. public and social devotion conducted. The Federal Go-Justice of King's Bench. The crime of those I have last vernment does not possess, in any of the States, nor has named, consisted in their attempt to subvert the liberty it the capacity to procure, the ground on which to erect a of the People: some of them were hung, and the rest were temple, unless as lessee of the United States' Bank. It banished. To these may be added the names of Sir Thohas no country. It has, I repeat it again, no people, no mas Empson and Edmund Dudley, guilty of exactions; citizens. Let it, then, look to the States for its wealth, Lord Bacon, of corruption; nor ought the names of Chanits strength, its prosperity. They are the true and only cellor Finch, Keeper of the Great Seal; Judges Davensource of them all. It is a mistake, to suppose that the port, Crowly, and Berkly, who were guilty of attempts wealth of a State consists in the richness, in the redun- upon the liberty of the People, to be pretermitted. dance of its exchequer. It is rich only in proportion as Sir William Scroggs, Lord Chief Justice of King's the money of the country is in the pockets of its citizens. Bench; Sir Francis North, Chief Justice of the Common It is impoverished by every dollar unnecessarily taken Bench; Sir Thomas Jones, one of the Judges of King's from their pockets. Its true wealth consists in the wealth Bench; and Sir Richard Weston, one of the Barons of the of its citizens-in their industry and enterprise. Its Exchequer, were all impeached by the Commons of Engstrength, in their freedom. No State can be strong, or land for partialities in the administration of justice. These even wealthy, whose citizens are not free. No State can instances show, that no influence nor dignity could secure be weak, or poor, whose citizens enjoy liberty. Take the Judges, either from corrupt practices, or from the vinotice, Mr. President, that I am speaking of States, or gilance of the Representatives of the People of England. Nations, and their citizens. The Federal Government is Other instances, Mr. President, might be adduced, from neither a State, nor a Nation; nor has it citizens. It is a the English history, or judicial corruption; but these will Government, merely: rich, in the true political sense of suffice to prove, what, in fact, needs no proof, namely, that word, only in the wealth of the States; strong, only that Judges are but men; that the ermine furnishes no sein their strength. It is to guard the General Government curity against the force of temptation, or the frailties of hufrom enfeeblement, by encroachments upon the powers man nature; that they are as liable to err, as any other deand rights of the States, that I made you the propositions, scription of public functionaries; and, from some unhappy the first of which I am now, fecbly, I fear, attempting to fatality, are, in the organization of almost every Governsupport. ment, made more irresponsible: while, from the comparative paucity of their numbers, and the nature of their powers and duties, they are greatly more exposed to temptation than their co-ordinate fiduciaries. Mr. President: the vigilance of no State has been able to give perpetuity to its liberty. There is a proneness in power to the enlargement of itself: no State has been able to resist that fatal proclivity. Its progress has been so Happily, the Judges of the Supreme Court of the Unitgradual, and so disguised, under the appearances of offi-ed States--I mean the present incumbents--are men upon cial duty and patriotic zeal, as to elude detection, until it whose integrity suspicion has never scowled. They have had acquired a resistless momentum. suffered only-if they have suffered at all, in the discusConfidence is the cement of society; it is the principlesion of this bill-from a profusion of injudicious eulogy in of its cohesion: and never, in that character, fails to perform its function. There is no instance on record in which distrust has usurped its place, and dissolved the bands of civil society: while history is clouded with instances in which the public functionaries have most perfidiously abused the confidence reposed in them by the People, and betrayed their dearest interests. There is no lodgement of power, in the making of which there has been so much difficulty experienced by the statesmen of all countries, as that of the Judiciary. There is none which has been exercised, by those who were invested with it, more oppressively to the People, and with more obliquity by the fiduciaries. The history of Rome and of England abound in instances of judicial malversation, bribery, and corruption. the House of Representatives. The ermine should never be tarnished with the spatterings of fulsome adulation. There is a sanctity about the judicial, like that about the matron character, which ought not to be profaned, even by well-meant declamatory praise. The matron should be content with the affectionate confidence of her husband, the Judges with the approving confidence of the People. Clamorous praise is injurious to the character of either: neither, if they do their duty, need it; and, with the intelligent, it is apt to be suspected to be but a fig-leaf expedient, kindly got up to conceal violated duty. The absence of murmurs and discontent is the most substantial commendation of both. I feel emboldened, Mr. President, by the unsuspected integrity of the Judges, to speak the more freely of their At Rome, as we learn from the aration of Cicero against encroachments upon the rights and powers of the States, Vetres, the bribery of the Judges was matter of course; by decisions merely erroneous. For, if irreparable injury and that those who were wealthy enough to do it, spoke may be done to the liberty of the People by mere error of of it with the same indifference with which they spoke of judicial opinion, what may not be apprehended from judithe common and ordinary dispositions of their money.cial corruption? And what right, Mr. President, have the From the history of that country, we learn, that the mo- People of these States to hope for a greater exemption ment a man became an informer, he was put under guard, froni judicial obliquity and corruption, than the People of lest he should bribe the Judges or the witnesses. Rome or of England? The present incumbents are not In England, the reigns of Edward the 1st, Richard the immortal; they cannot remain upon the bench forever. I 2d, Henry the 8th, James the 1st, Charles the 1st, and have shown you, by reference to the history of England, Charles the 2d, were marked by judicial tyranny, obliqui- that Judges in that country, loaded with wealth, encumry, and corruption. Sir Ralph de Hengham, Chief Justice bered with honors, and distinguished for their intellectual of the King's Bench; Sir Thomas Wayland, Chief Justice attainments, were convicted, some of them for corruption of the Common Bench; and Sir Adam de Shailon, Chief in office, and others for what was worse, if possible-comBaron of the Exchequer, were convicted and punished, bining with the ambitious and unprincipled to destroy the and that heavily too, for their corrupt exactions in the ad-liberty of the People. I urge, Mr. President, not that our ministration of justice. The Earl of Suffolk; M. D. la Judges are bad men, (for I believe them to be good men Pole, Lord Chancellor of the Kingdom; the Duke of Ire- but that we may have bad Judges; but whether we shall land; and the Archbishop of York, were declared guilty or not, that it is wise to guard against those errors and inof high treason; and a number of Judges, who, in their discretions to which, as men, they must be subject. What judicial capacity, had acted as their instruments, were in- has been, may be again. There not only have been bad volved in their condemnation: among whom were Sir Ro- Judges, but the world has been infested with them. The bert Belknap and Sir Robert Tresclean, the latter Chief country whose history I have just quoted, was harassed by them for centuries, and would have continued to be so, had she not learned wisdom from experience, and coverted her punitory into cautionary vigilance; and, instead of hanging and banishing her Judges, placed them in a posture of dependence upon, and responsibility to, the will of the People. This was done by an act of Parliament, in the thirteenth year of William 3d, which fixed the salaries of the Judges, and provided that the King should remove them, upon the request of a bare majority of that body. By this act, the Judges were brought within the reach of the Representative principle, and thereby made accountable to the People, and dependent upon their will. Since that time, the Judges of England have been pure, upright, and independent. Since that period, the People of that country have enjoyed, so far as related to their Judges, | what no other People ever enjoyed for the same length of time, namely, that tranquillity, peace of mind, and security of person and property, which constitutes the essence of human comfort, and which alone can be enjoyed under a just and impartial administration of the laws. Since that period, the Judges, instead of lending themselves to the King, as the avenues and instruments whereby to oppress the People, have become, by being made dependent upon their will, and independent of the crown, the impregnable bulwark of the liberty of that country. [SENATE. The patriots who framed the Constitution of the United States were strongly impressed with the multiplied evils which had resulted to mankind, from the want of integrity and independence, in the judicial departme t of their various Governments. The cruelties and corr ptions which had marked the dependence of the English Judiciary upon the King, were vivid in their minds; the fate of Sidney, Russel, and other votaries of liberty in that country, was no doubt ascribed, and justly too, to the servility of the Judges to the King. They overlooked, unhappily, the discovery which the English had made, at the epoch to which I have alluded, and in their zeal to render the Judges independent, have made them absolute. They have placed them by the Constitution more independent of the Executive Department than they were of the King anterior to the 13th of William 3d, and even less responsible to the People than they were there; for there, when the People could neither remove the Judges, nor regulate or reduce their salaries, they could reach and punish their obliquities by an act of attainder-a measure, to which the enormity of judicial malversation constrained them sometimes to resort-a measure resulting from the power created by the social compact, and not interdicted, either by the form of their Government, or their magna charta; a power never used by that nation, but for the protection of the liberty of the People against official en case of a desperate disease: a remedy which has fallen into disuse, in that country, since their Judges have been tamed, and made the guardians, instead of the assailants, of the rights and liberty of the People. The exercise of that power is wisely negatived in the Constitutions of the States. The English are the only People in the Old World who have found out the great secret wherein judicial indepen-croachment; a desperate remedy, administered only in the dence consists. It was a precious discovery. They knew its worth, and availed themselves of it, by the provisions of the act to which I have just alluded. Before that time, the King appointed and paid the Judges. They were his Judges so called. The King's Judges-of course his creatures. By that act they became the Peoples' Judges; dependent upon the will of the People for their salaries, and the tenure of their offices. Before that time, they were dependent upon the will of the King for both; they were commissioned by him during his pleasure. By that act, it was provided that they should be commissioned during good behaviour; that is, during the pleasure of the People, instead of the pleasure of the King. Before that time, the nation was repeatedly agitated, and sometimes almost convulsed, by the efforts of the People to get rid of corrupt, oppressive, and tyrannical Judges. They had no mode of doing it, but by banishment and hanging. There the Judges had the protection of the King, whose pliant instruments they frequently were. Since they have been made dependent upon the People, and responsible to them, there has been no attempt to remove any of them; no agitations; no convulsions. And why, Mr. President? Because, knowing that they could be deprived of their salaries and offices by the People, whenever they should please to exercise that power, they have administered impartial and even-handed justice; and the People are not so capricious as the advocates for judicial infallibility are in the habit of representing them to be. For a People who govern themselves, to require their Judges to be independent of their will, or even to permit it, is to surrender their liberty. The The Judges of the United States, then, Mr. President, are, unhappily for the States, more independent of the People than were even the Judges of England, while they belonged to the King. There the punitory power of the People, when they were agonized by judicial iniquities, and only then, could reach the Judges. Here they cannot be reached effectually by either the punitory or restraining power of the People. There is, Mr. President, a peculiarity in the Government of the United States; it has all the energy, and aims at all the grandeur and magnificence of a National Government, without being really so. It is a great corporation, removed from the People by the intervention of other corporate structures. State Governments are between it and the People. The judicial functionaries of the General Government, removed, as they are, from the People, by the intervention of the machinery and functionaries of the State Govern ments, and created, as they are, without any immediate agency, on the part of the People, cannot be expected to regard the People of the States with any very peculiar sensibility, or to be regarded by them with the vigilance necessary to the preservation of their rights. The attention of the People must be engaged in superintending the agency, and in restraining the official vagrancy, of their own immediate State functionaries. And when was it, The Judges, therefore, should be constrained to carry that any People were known to be able to preserve their the laws into effect. The power of the law, and the pow-liberties from the encroachment of those to whom they er of constraining the Judges to carry the law into effect, had confided the administration of their Government? consist alike in the will of the People; the Judges, there- The powers delegated by the People to their official fore, should be dependent upon the will of the People, agents, for the purposes of one Government, have always and independent of every other will whatever, except been perverted to the destruction of their liberty, in dethat of Heaven. And this dependence upon the will of the spite of all the vigilance they could use. How then can People constitutes (strange as it may seem to superficial it be expected, that they can guard their liberties against observers) the independence of the Judges-so much talked the encroachments of two sets of functionaries; between about, and so little understood. The independence one of which, and themselves, there is no intimacy of rewhich, since its discovery and reduction to practice, in lation; indeed, no relation, but that which consists in the England, has secured to the People of that country the exercise of power, on the one side, and submission on the enjoyment of as much liberty as is compatible with their form other; power on the side of the Judges, and submission of Government, and shed a lustre upon their judiciary, which on the side of the People. excites the admiration and envy of surrounding nations. Vob. 11.-29 The Judges of the General Government are subject to SENATE.] The Judicial System. [APRIL 10, 1826. no legal responsibility; and they cannot be under the in- Judicial obliquity was visited upon single individuals, and fluence of moral responsibility. They are the Judges of a mostly upon those who had been so unfortunate as to incur Government that has no People, no citizens. There is, be- the displeasure of the throne; upon individuals who, intween them and the People, the State Governments, and spired by the love of liberty, dared to oppose the extenthe State functionaries. They are not on the level of hu- sion of the royal prerogative. The pecuniary exactions man agency, and human sympathy. They visit that level made by the Judges, in the indulgence of avaricious imclad in the panoply of power. Their contact with the Peo- pulses, were comparatively of little importance. The ple, is marked by authority; is marked only by the display People were saved from frequent and extensive visitations of power on the one side, and submission on the other. of that sort; by the moral restraint of which I have just For, although the General Government and its functiona-spoken; by the moral responsibility of the Judges. But ries are the property of the People of the States, yet, em- here, the Judges may visit States; may visit the whole boklened by their irresponsibility; secure in their salaries, People of a State, in their corporate character, in obediand their offices; conscious that neither can be affected by ence to what they may choose to consider their official the People, or Governments of the States, they treat both duty; and thereby swell the power of the Government, as their property; they can, therefore, be under no moral whose organs they are. They may neutralize, or even responsibility-there is no medium through which it can paralyze, the power of the States, without being conscious act upon them. They occupy an exalted corporate thea- of intending to inflict an injury upon them. Influenced by tre; they are seated upon an eminence of power, which, that love of power, which is natural to man, when invested though erected by the People of the States, cannot be af- with it, and habituated to exercise it, they may diminish fected by them. To talk of the moral responsibility of the happiness and endanger the liberty of millions of freeJudges placed by their installation beyond the reach of men; and if, without intending to do more than to display the will of the People, is to betray a want of knowledge of the splendors of judicial intellect; if, when they are only human nature; the manners, the customs, habits, and mo- endeavoring to excite public admiration, by the exercise ral sentiments, of the People, cannot be expected to con- of their powers of construction, they may inflict injuries so trol those Judges, who are not only not controlled by, but vital upon the States: What may not Judges, wholly irrehave the absolute control of, the People. sponsible as they are, not do towards the degredation of the States, and the vassalage of the People, when they shall design to do so? It is true that there is implanted in the nature of man, a fine sense of feeling; a nice and delicate sensibility, which has a mighty influence upon human conduct. If these Mr. President: The present incumbents are above all feelings do not constitute, they have an intimate con- suspicion; obliquity of motive has never been ascribed to nexion with, the moral sense. It is through their agency, any of them; their successors may not possess, or deserve, that shame restrains from ignoble, and honor quickens us public confidence to the same extent. But, let it be reto noble deeds. But it is the man, and not the Judge; it membered, that the Judges against whom injurious impuis the moral, and not the corporate agent, who is con- tations were not made, even when the fervor of party postrained by these feelings. It is also true, that the absence litics was at its highest, sustained and enforced the alien of those fine feelings, is as likely to characterize the man and sedition laws. American citizens were fined heavily, who is the official agent, as their presence. Jefferies was and imprisoned too, under the sedition law: such was the a Judge, as well as Hale. The latter was an ornament and proneness of those Judges to swell the power of the Goa blessing to society. The former a disgrace and a pest.vernment whose functionaries they were. Although the The latter was accessible, if I may so speak, to moral re- liberty of speech, and of the press, were guarantied by sponsibility, by the fine sensibilities of his heart. The the Constitution to all the citizens of the States; yet they former was destitute of those sensibilities; and of course fined and imprisoned several of our citizens for exercising inaccessible to that kind of responsibility. Both were the that liberty. That law, which struck at the very root of Judicial organs of a nation, and sustained toward the Peo-liberty, was gravely decided to be constitutional by the ple of the nation, the same relation which the Judges of Judges of the Federal Government, while laws, enacted the States sustain towards the People of the States respec- by the States, in relation to the soil within their limits; tively; they were within the circle of social sympathy on laws, enacted to give repose to occupancy, by limiting the the theatre of social agency; they were the custodes morum. period within which suits should be brought for the proThey were accessible to moral influence, and of course tection of the honest occupants, have as gravely been de moral responsibility might, from their relative posture to cided by them to be unconstitutional and void. But what the People, be predicated of them. They were in unceas-power is it, which any of the States has exercised, which ing contact with the People: they gave to the rules of con- tended at all to assert its sovereignty, and vindicate the duct and of property their practical application. Not so, rights, real or personal, of its citizens, which those Judges Mr. President, with the Judges of whom we are speaking; have not either disparaged or vacated by their decisions? they are the Judges of a corporation, which, for want of And, Mr. President, what law of Congress has been connexion with the People, may as properly, as any other enacted which tended to trench upon the rights of the corporation, be said to have no heart; their Ministry is not States, or of the citizens of the States, which that Court the custodia morum. They minister, not in giving effect has not affirmed to be constitutional and valid? The Conto the will of the People, but in controlling their will; in gress, in an evil hour, enacted a law, creating a Bank, with denying to them the right to manage their own concerns a capital of $35,000,000, with power to plant offices of by their own agents, according to their own will; in divest- Discount or Deposite in any, and all, of the States, withing the States, by tortuous construction, of those powers out their consent. The power to enact this law was not and rights in which the liberty and happiness of the Peo-given to Congress in the Constitution-I have, I trust, ple consist. shewn, that the powers of the General Government exist in grant; that they are, and must necessarily be, express, and cannot be implied; that the People of a State, or Nation, may, through the agency of their functionaries, create a Corporation; but that the Corporation, when created, must be content with the powers granted; that its powers, necessarily, consist in grant, and that it cannot create another Corporation-and that, too, with powers not conceded to itself. Sir, while the Judges came down from the King, the People of England were afflicted, oppressed, agonized; when they ascended from the People, and were rendered, politically as well as morally, responsible to them, they became tranquil and happy. The Federal Judges come down upon the People of the States, from the Federal Government, as did the Judges from the King upon the People of England; with this difference, that there was a moral responsibility there: here there can be none. There I need not here repeat the reasons; I need not state APRIL 10, 1826. The Judicial System. [SENATE. hended by the People of the States, from a coalescence, unconsciously if you please, of their kindred, irresponsible, and stupendous powers? Avarice and ambition are two of the strongest passions in our nature. The one aims at wealth, the other at dominion. Office is power-so is wealth; success places the votaries of each above the reach of the social sympathics of the mass of mankind, but does not extinguish the social bias of their nature. It places both above the vicissitudes and cross-purposes of common life, gives leisure to both, and invites them, by all the points in common between them, to a state of concert and intercommunion. The coalition between Cæsar, Pompey, and Crassus, was of this character; the blood of Pharsalia marked its progress, the prostration of Roman liberty its end. Crassus was dropped by the way-his wealth was used, and he was no longer useful; but the Bank of the United States is composed of more durable materials. It is a corporate agent, which wields and controls all the money, or nearly all, which the commerce of the United States employs. And surely, Mr. President, no arguments need be used to prove to this Senate, that the power which controls the money of a country, controls the People of that country. I wish not to be misunderstood here; I say that when the Government of any country surrenders to a Corporation the control of the money which is employed in the agencies of the People of that country, it surrenders, not only the People, but, eventually, the Government of the People, to that Corporation. This Bank, sir, was created, and has been, thus far, cherished and sustained by the General Government and its judicial organs, ostensibly as a convenient collector of the public revenue, but really, it is to be feared, as the medium through which the General Government might act, with all the force of money, upon the People of the States, alienate them from the Local Governments, and connect them with the General Government-not as the agents whose will should administer the Government, but as subjects whose will should be controlled by it. that the Constitution, itself, negatives, expressly, the ex- protegee of the Judges-possessing an intrinsic power beercise of any power by the Federal Government, not yond even that of the Judges, and more irresponsible, if therein granted; that all the power, not granted, remain-possible, than they are. What, I ask, may not be appreed with the People and the States; consisted in the will of the People, and they belonged to the States. Yet the Judges of the Federal Court decided that this law was Constitutional and valid. Here we have all the power of construction, which is usually exerted to vacate a State law, employed to sustain this. It was in vain to urge that this Bank could not be authorized by the General Government to do, what that Government itself could not do: namely, to become a land holder, a land speculator, within the States; to become a landlord to an enormous-in effect, to an unlimited-extent. The General Government could not, itself, by any means whatever, own, even with the consent of the States, more land in any of them than should be necessary for the erection of forts, magazines, dock-yards, &c.; and yet the Judges of that Court determined, that the Congress could, lawfully, create a Corporation, and invest it with power to hold lands in any of the States, not only for its immediate accommodation, in the transaction of its business, but to become the mortgagee of lands, to any extent, and to receive them in payment of debts. The Judges of that Court, also, as gravely determined that the same Bank, which might lawfully thrust itself into any and every one of the States, and become a freeholder and landlord in each of them, in addition to its other privileges, should have the special privilege of sueing, and being sued, in the Courts of the United States. So that you sec, Mr. President, what are the construing powers of these Judges; they first construe this Bank, with all its enormous powers, into existence, and then construe themselves into exclusive jurisdiction of all its causes. They confer upon it the power of drawing the citizens, whom it shall sue, or by whom it may be sued, from the extremest parts of the State, into the Federal Court. Nor is it unworthy of observation, that, in construing this monster into legitimacy, they construe the States out of their sovereign taxing power, at least so far as related to the money it employed within the State for banking purposes. Yes, sir, the States of Maryland, Ohio, and Kentucky, were successively trodden down by this Political Jugernaut. There is scarcely a State in this Union, whose power of self-government has not, at one time or other, been denied and resisted by the Judges of that Court. It is vain to urge that, by the genius and structure of our Governments, the citizens, and their property, belong, exclusively, to the States. That their conduct and their tenures are, of course, subjects of exclusive State Legislation; that the object of the erection of the Federal Government was the regulation of the exterior concerns, and foreign relations, of the States; that it was to regulate the intercommunion of the States with foreign nations, and with each other, that it was not to act upon the citizens individually, except in special and specified cases. Judicial construction must be employed, and whether employed by the Judges, in the derivation of power to themselves, or in its application to others, has achieved wonders. It is a new and mighty agent-boundless in its strength, indefinable in its structure, and terrible in its operations. It has the faculty of enveloping certainty in doubt, and, eventually, substituting judicial discretion for law-for rule. What may not be apprehended from the exercise of this discretion in times which are to come? The Judges, as has been shown, represent a mere Corporation-the Federal Government; they are created by ht; placed above the control of the will of the People. In a state of disconnection with them; inaccessible to the charities and sympathies of social life; subject, in the exercise of their powers, to the restraints, ostensibly, of the law and the Constitution; but, really, to those of their own will only. The Bank of the United States, the creature of the perverted corporate powers of the Federal Government, the This Bank Charter, Mr. President, I consider as a supplement to the Constitution of the United States, by which the Government of the Union is essentially and radically changed; the federative character of the Government is obliterated by it; its exterior federative complexion is as yet retained. But it is no longer a Federal Government; it is a National Government. The People of the States will be brought within the control of the Government as effectually, by this supplement to the Constitution, as they could have been by that instrument in its original formation, if such had been the avowed intent of its framers. This Bank may, and who can doubt but it will, exert its influence in the State elections, aye, and in those of the General Government too. The time may come, when the aspirants to the Chief Magistracy will look to it only for their elevation. It has, it cannot but have, all who are entitled to vote, more or less in its power; it is, mediately or immediately, the creditor of them all. The People have its money, are indebted to it for the whole amount in circulation, and we all know how to estimate the independence of debtors and tenants. Sir, we have seen the lays of a sovereign State arraigned in the Supreme Court by that Institution; we have heard the counsel, which it had employed to degrade the State, address that Court as the most august tribunal beneath the sun; as a tribunal whose nod gave rule to sovereign States. And what followed? Did that august tribunal declare the State laws, which the Bank had thus arraigned, unconstitutional? No, sir; that task is reserved, and will, no doubt, be performed hereafter. But, it authorized the Judges on their circuits to enact a suitable system of execution rulesnot laws, Mr. President-rules of Court. The Congress |