government, and that this can be best done by erecting it into a corporation, may be established by the most satisfactory reasoning. It has a relation, more or less direct, to the power of collecting taxes, to that of borrowing money, to that of regulating trade between the states, and to those of raising and maintaining fleets and armies.[1] And it may be added, that it has a most important bearing upon the regulation of currency between the states. It is an instrument, which has been usually applied by governments in the administration of their fiscal and financial operations.[2] And in the present times it can hardly require argument to prove, that it is a convenient, a useful, and an essential instrument in the fiscal operations of the government of the United States.[3] This is so generally admitted by sound and intelligent statesmen, that it would be a waste of time to endeavour to establish the truth by an elaborate survey of the mode, in which it touches the administration of all the various branches of the powers of the government.[4]
- ↑ Hamilton on Bank, 1 Hamilton's Works, p. 138.
- ↑ Hamilton on Bank, 1 Hamilton's Works, p. 152, 153.
- ↑ M'Culloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. R. 422, 423.
- ↑ In Mr. Hamilton's celebrated Argument on the Constitutionality of the Bank of the United States, in Feb. 1791, there is an admirable exposition of the whole of this branch of the subject. As the document is rare, the following passages are inserted:
"It is presumed to have been satisfactorily shown, in the course of the preceding observations, 1. That the power of the government, as to the objects entrusted to its management, is, in its nature, sovereign. 2. That the right of erecting corporations, is one, inherent in, and inseparable from, the idea of sovereign power. 3. That the position, that the government of the United States can exercise no power, but such as is delegated to it by its constitution, does not militate against this principle. 4. That the word necessary, in the general clause, can have no restrictive operation, derogating from the force of this principle; indeed, that the degree, in which a measure is, or is not necessary, cannot be a test of constitutional right, but of expediency only. 5. That the power to erect corporations is not to be considered, as an independent and
