by the President, which appeared so wanton and ill-advised. Two men were then living, who of all others, were best fitted to counsel and guide the nation. These were Mr. Madison and Mr. Gallatin,- alike venerable for their age, but far more so for the eminent services that each had rendered to the nation. Next to Washington and Hamilton, no one contributed so much as Madison toward the formation of its government. Secretary of State for the whole period of Jefferson's administration, he was President for the eight succeeding years, discharging all the duties of his exalted station with singular disinterestedness and success. He earnestly opposed the first Bank, upon constitutional grounds. Its charter expired under his administration. He was witness of the terrible disasters which followed the refusal to extend it. As the only means of escaping from them, he recommended the creation of a new Bank, waiving his constitutional scruples as having been overruled by competent precedents of the past. The reasons for the change in his opinions were fully set out in a letter, designed for publication, in reply to General Jackson's attack, in which he said :

"The charge of inconsistency between my objection to the constitutionality of such a Bank in 1791 and my assent in 1817 turns on the question, how far legislative precedents, expounding the Constitution, ought to guide succeeding legislatures, and to overrule individual opinions.

"Some obscurity has been thrown over the question, by confounding it with the respect due from one legislature to laws passed by preceding legislatures. But the two cases are essentially different. A constitution, being derived from a superior authority, is to be expounded and obeyed, not controlled or varied, by the subordinate authority of a legislature. A law, on the other hand, resting on no higher authority than that possessed by every successive legislature, its expediency as well as its meaning is within the scope of the latter.

"The case in question has its true analogy in the obligations arising from judicial expositions of the law on succeeding judges; the constitution being a law to the legislator, as the law is a rule of decision to the judge.

"And why are judicial precedents, when formed on due discussion and deliberately sanctioned by reviews and repetitions, regarded as of binding influence, or rather of authoritative force, in settling the meaning of a law? It must be answered, 1st, Because it is a reasonable and established axiom, that the good of society requires that the rules of conduct of its members should be certain and known, which would not be the case if any judge,

disregarding the decisions of his predecessors should vary the rule of law according to his individual interpretation of it: "Misera est servitus ubi jus est aut vagum aut incognitum." 2d, Because an exposition of the law, publicly made, and repeatedly confirmed by the constituted authority, carries with it, by fair inference, the sanction of those who, having made the law through their legislative organ, appear under such circumstances to have determined its meaning through their judiciary organ.

"Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a constitution should be fixed and known than that the meaning of a law should be so? Can, indeed, a law be fixed in its meaning and operation, unless the constitution be so? On the contrary, if a particular legislature, differing in the construction of the constitution from a series of preceding constructions, proceed to act on that difference, they not only introduce uncertainty and instability in the constitution, but in the laws themselves; inasmuch as all laws preceding the new construction, and inconsistent with it, are not only annulled for the future, but virtually pronounced nullities from the beginning.

"But it is said that the legislator, having sworn to support the constitution, must support it in his own construction of it, however different from that put on it by his predecessors, or whatever be the consequences of the construction. And is not the judge under the same oath to support the law? Yet, has it ever been supposed that he was required or at liberty to disregard all precedents, however solemnly repeated and regularly observed; and, by giving effect to his own abstract and individual opinions, to disturb the established course of practice in the business of the community? Has the wisest and most conscientious judge ever scrupled to acquiesce in decisions in which he has been overruled by the matured opinions of the majority of his colleagues; and subsequently to conform himself thereto, as to authoritative expositions of the law? And is it not reasonable to suppose that the same view of the official oath should be taken by a legislature acting under the constitution, which is his guide, as is taken by a judge acting under the law, which is his?

"There is, in fact, and in common understanding, a necessity of regarding a course of practice, as above characterized, in the light of a legal rule of interpreting a law; and there is a like necessity of considering it a constitutional rule of interpreting a constitution. "That there may be extraordinary and peculiar circumstances controlling the rule in both cases, may be admitted; but, with such exceptions, the rule will force itself on the practical judgment of the most ardent theorist. He will find it impossible to adhere to, and act officially upon, his solitary opinions as to the meaning of the law or constitution, in opposition to a construction reduced to practice during a reasonable period of time; more especially where no prospect existed of a change of construction by the public or its agents. And if a reasonable period of time, marked with the usual sanctions, would not bar the individual prerogative, there could be no limitation to its exercise, although the danger of error

must increase with the increasing oblivion of explanatory circumstances, and with the continual changes in the import of words and phrases.

"Let it, then, be left to the decision of every intelligent and candid judge, which, on the whole, is most to be relied on for the true and safe construction of a constitution: that which has the uniform sanction of successive legislative bodies, through a period of years, and under the varied ascendency of parties; or that which depends on the opinions of every new legislature, heated as it may be by the spirit of party, eager in the pursuit of some favorite object, or led astray by the eloquence and address of popular statesmen, themselves perhaps under the influence of the same misleading

To these words of moderation and wisdom, to a construction necessary to the maintenance of government even under a despotism, for, unless the past be in great measure the guide for the immediate future, chaos usurps the place of order and law,- General Jackson replied, in his veto of the bill extending the charter of the Bank that:

"The Supreme Court ought not to control the co-ordinate authorities of this government. The Congress, the executive, and the court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President, to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval, as it is of the supreme judges, when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges; and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive, when acting in their respective capacities; but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve."

:

In the preceding extract, every one now sees the beginning of the end Jackson completed the work of Jefferson. The latter denied to our government the powers necessary to its very existence; the former, by making the will or caprice of the individual the rule of his conduct, inaugurated the reign of anarchy and barbarism.2

1 History of the Bank, p. 778.

2 Jackson has usually been regarded as deserving great praise for upholding the Constitution at the first attempt of South Carolina to put into practice Jeffer

Next to Mr. Madison, the person best entitled to be heard and to counsel the nation in such a crisis was Mr. Gallatin.

son's theory of the nature of our government. Never was praise more undeserved. There was hardly a shade of difference in the political principles of the two. South Carolina was personated in Calhoun, — a man of boundless ambition, whose place Jackson had secured. Defeated, Calhoun, partly in revenge, brought forward his nullification doctrines, the pretext being the tariff. Jackson, enraged against his rival for seeking his place, attacked him with the utmost fury, and always regretted that he had not hanged him, as a proper and summary mode of dealing with such an antagonist. In reply to the Ordinance of Secession, Jackson did utter some fine things about the Constitution, and the obligations it imposed, far too fine for his Southern friends, who in turn assailed him with as much fury as he had assailed Calhoun. Finding that he had gone too far, that he had been wholly misunderstood, he authorized a full recantation of the doctrines contained in the proclamation, planting himself squarely on the resolutions of 1798, the very grounds upon which South Carolina threatened to secede : —

"The proclamation, then, in the passages objected to, has merely spoken the facts of history, the language of the Constitution, and of the Declaration of Independence. There is no speculative opinion advanced, no theory proposed. And we have endeavored to show that nothing in these generalities tended in the slightest degree to justify the inferences drawn from them, and which have been substituted as the principles of the proclamation. But we are authorized to be more explicit, and to say positively that no part of the proclamation was meant to countenance the consolidating principles which have been ascribed to it. On the contrary, its doctrines, if construed in the sense they were intended, and carried out, inculcate that the Constitution of the United States is founded in compact, that this compact derives its obligation from the agreement entered into by the people of each of the States, in their political capacity, with the people of the other States; that the Constitution, which is the offspring of this compact, has its sanction in the ratification of the people of the several States, acting in the capacity of separate communities; that the majority of the people of the United States, in the aggregate, have no power to alter the Constitution of the general government, but that change or amendment can only be proposed in the mode pointed out in the Constitution, and can never become obligatory unless ratified by the people of three-fourths of the States, through their respective legislatures or State conventions; that, inasmuch as the sovereign power of the people in each State has imparted to the Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, paramount obligation over State legislation, or any constitution or form of State government which may be instituted by the people of such State; and inasmuch as the people of each State have bound themselves, by compact with the rest, to abide by one paramount authority until changed according to the provisions of the Constitution, so declared to be paramount, -no constitution, law, or ordinance of any one State is valid to defeat the Constitution and laws of the States, or to sever the mutual obligations which bind the States together; — that, in the case of a violation of the Constitution of the United States, and the usurpation of powers not granted by it on the part of the functionaries of the general government, the State governments have the right to interpose to arrest the evil, UPON THE PRINCIPLES WHICH ARE SET FORTH IN THE VIRGINIA RESOLUTIONS OF 1798, AGAINST THE ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS."- Washington Globe, Sept. 21, 1833.

There is not a word in all this to which Calhoun would not have fully subscribed. So long as a State remained in the Union, and did not question the

A Senator from Pennsylvania, he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury by Mr. Jefferson, soon after his inauguration, a position which he held till April, 1813; serving through the whole period of Jefferson's Presidency, and through four years of that of Mr. Madison. No other man ever held a place in the cabinet for so long a time. Certainly, no man, with one single exception, discharged the duties of his office with equal ability. He was one of those rare men as capable in affairs as in political life. No one ever had so favorable an opportunity of estimating the services rendered by the Bank to the nation, and the importance, at all times, of such an institution. In his "Considerations on Currency," a work of remarkable insight into the laws of money, and expressed in a style of conciseness and elegance rare among writers on the subject, he bears the following testimony to the constitutionality of both Banks, and to the services rendered by them :

-

"It is our deliberate opinion that the suspension might have been prevented at the time when it took place, had the former Bank of the United States been still in existence. The exaggerated increase of State Banks, occasioned by the dissolution of that institution, would not have occurred. That Bank would, as before, have restrained within proper bounds, and checked their issues; and, through the means of its offices, it would have been in possession of the earliest symptoms of the approaching danger. . .

"It will be found, by reference to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury of December, 1815, that his recommendation to establish a National Bank was, in express terms, called a proposition relating to the national circulating medium,' and was exclusively founded on the necessity of restoring specie payments and the national currency. He states it as a fact, incontestably proved, that the State Banks could not at that time be successfully employed to furnish an uniform national currency. He mentions the failure of one attempt to associate them with that view; that another attempt,

constitutionality of any act complained of, it must submit. So, if it sought to change the Constitution, it must proceed according to the appointed methods. It had, however, according to General Jackson, always reserved to itself the right to peaceably withdraw from the Union, when it should judge a further continuance in it to be opposed to its interests, its ideas, or its rights, "according to the principles laid down in the Resolutions of 1798; "which provided that each State was a judge as well of the infraction (of the Constitution), as of the mode and measure of redress; and that a nullification, by such sovereignty, of all unauthorized acts done under the color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy. The whole contest between Jackson and Calhoun grew out of political rivalries, and, so far as the former was concerned, never rose above the dignity of a squabble for spoils.