gress. It was more than once proposed in the Convention of 1787, and rejected from an apprehension, chiefly, that it might prove an obstacle to the adoption of the Constitution. Such an addition to the Federal powers was thought to be strongly recommended by several considerations: 1. As Congress would possess, exclusively, the sources of revenue most productive and least unpopular, that body ought to provide and apply the means for the greatest and most costly works. 2. There would be cases where canals would be highly important in a national view, and not so in a local view. 3. Cases where, though highly important in a national view, they might violate the interest, real or supposed, of the State through which they would pass, of which an example might now be cited in the Chesapeake and Delaware canal, known to have been viewed in an unfavourable light by the State of Delaware. 4. There might be cases where canals, or a chain of canals, would pass through sundry States, and create a channel and outlet for their foreign commerce, forming at the same time a ligament for the Union, and extending the profitable intercourse of its members, and yet be of hopeless attainment if left to the limited faculties and joint exertions of the States possessing the authority.
ⅭⅭⅭⅬⅩⅩⅤ. James Madison to C.J. Ingersoll.[1]
The evil which produced the prohibitory clause in the Constitution of the United States was the practice of the States in making bills of credit, and in some instances appraised property, “a legal tender.” If the notes of the State Banks, therefore, whether chartered or unchartered, be made a legal tender, they are prohibited; if not made a legal tender, they do not fall within the prohibitory clause. The No. of the “Federalist” referred to (44) was written with that view of the subject; and this, with probably other contemporary expositions, and the uninterrupted practice of the States in creating and permitting banks without making their notes a legal tender, would seem to be a bar to the question, if it were not inexpedient now to agitate it.
A virtual and incidental enforcement of the depreciated notes of the State Banks, by their crowding out a sound medium, though a great evil, was not foreseen; and if it had been apprehended, it is questionable whether the Constitution of the United States, which had many obstacles to encounter, would have ventured to guard against it by an additional obstacle.
- ↑ Letters and other Writings of James Madison, Ⅳ, 160.
