REJECTED AMENDMENTS. 333 The provisions on the subject prior to the proposed amendment were: State Constitutions: 1776, Maryland, XL; North Carolina, XXII; Pennsylvania, V; Virginia, I, 4. 1777, Vermont, I, VI; Georgia, XI, (the precedent for the amendment.) 1780, Massachusetts, pt. i, VI. 1790, Pennsylvania, IX, 24; South Carolina, IX, 5. 1792, New Hampshire, I, 9, repeated from 1784, I, 9. Delaware, I, 19; Kentucky, XII, 26. 1796, Tennessee, XI, 30. 1799, Kentucky, X, 26. Amendments by Ratifying Conventions: 1788, New Hampshire, IX, Bulletin of Department North Carolina, IV, Id., 267. Virginia, IV, Elliot, III, 657. Between 1789 and 1889, more than seventeen hundred (1740) amendments were proposed to the constitution. See Ames's Proposed Amendments to the Constitution of the United States During the First Century of Its History, a Prize Essay, printed in the Report of the American Historical Association, 1896, Vol. II, (1897.) CHAPTER I. THE STATES AND THE UNITED STATES CONTEND FOR SOVEREIGNTY. While the first Congress was struggling with the question of amending the Constitution another question arose involving the administration of the government and the meaning of the Constitution. This was the establishment of a national bank. Concerning the constitutionality of such a venture, the chief advisers of Washington held irreconcilable opinions. Jefferson was loath to depart from the letter of the Constitution. While it empowered Congress to borrow money, to lay taxes, to equip fleets and armies and to promote the general welfare, it contained, he said, not one word about a bank. The boundaries of the powers of Congress were thus plainly laid down and beyond them it would be dangerous to advance a single step. He conceded that Congress could lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare, but this did not mean to lay them for any purpose for which it pleased, as it was restricted to paying the debts and providing for the welfare of the Union. The framers, he claimed, had never intended to make Congress the sole judge of good and evil, but rather had laced that body up within enumerated powers. A bank, he said, was not necessary in order to administer the broad provision that Congress can make all laws necessary and proper for carrying its powers into execution. To Jefferson such a corporation as a bank seemed plainly unnecessary, and, therefore, unauthorized by the Constitution. He did not deny that a bank would facilitate the collection of taxes, but the Constitution permitted only necessary and not merely convenient agencies for 337 |