define and punish crimes, other than those enumerated in the Constitution; a right solely and exclusively appertaining to the respective States within their own territories." Yet, in eighteen hundred and seven, a bill was signed by the same hand which penned this declaration, to punish, as capital offences, frauds committed on the bank. Thus did he sustain an institution he had pronounced unconstitutional; and sanction an act he had declared "void and of no effect;" by the utmost force of a new penal

statute.

With these facts in view, it is not difficult to believe a statement of Gallatin, that Jefferson, while President, looking to a renewal of the charter of the bank, requested him, "so to manage it, that it might become a law, by the ten days' operation."

A war abundantly justified, but improvidently undertaken and feebly waged, brought with it, not only its defeats and successes, but its stern lessons of necessity. In the midst of that war, Jefferson bears this decided attestation to the value of a National bank. "I like well," he

writes, "your idea of issuing Treasury notes, bearing interest; because I am persuaded, they would soon be withdrawn from circulation, and locked up in vaults and private hoards; *** the other idea, of a National bank, I do not concur in, because it seems now decided, that Congress has not that power, ALTHOUGH I SINCERELY WISH, THEY HAD IT, EXCLUSIVELY."*

Madison, is seen to have sanctioned a bank chartered by Congress, urging their assent, by an intimation of the probable necessity, "of issuing notes of the Government as a common medium of circulation.'

Nor was Monroe more inflexible. Having voted in

* Jefferson to Thomas Law, MS., "Nov. 6-13," 1813.

seventeen hundred and ninety-one, both against the original and supplementary bills; and, having sustained the succeeding charter, he wrote, "As to the Constitutional objection, it formed no serious obstacle. In voting against it, in the first instance, I was governed essentially by policy. The construction I gave to the Constitution, I considered a strict one. In the latter instance, it was more liberal, but, according to my judgment, justified by its powers."

These attestations to Hamilton's views were given by a party, "severely schooled both by adversity and experience." They also have received the unanimous and frequent sanctions of the only † Constitutional Tribunal. Acting under the power which Hamilton had imparted to it, of expounding the Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States, "deprecating the baneful influence of the narrow construction" of his adversaries, "on all the operations of the Government;" and declaring, "the absolute impracticability of maintaining it, without rendering the Government incompetent to its objects," adopted, in all its force and extent, his "opinion on the constitutionality of the Bank of the United States."

* James Monroe to Silas E. Burrows, Jan. 20, 1831.

Madison placed his final act, on the ground, of "precedent superseding opinion;" and, while he would derive his justification from the decisions of the judiciary, contested its claim to be the "exclusive expositor of the constitutionality of laws," averring, the "co-ordinate authorities, legislative and executive, to be equally expositors within the scope of their functions."

NOTE.

That eminent lawyer-Horace Binney-in an exquisite sketch, entitled "The Leaders of the Old Bar of Philadelphia," states, in his notice of WILLIAM LEWIS, p. 26: "Its great principles were discussed between the two," (Hamilton and Lewis), "until all the reasons of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the answers to the objectious of the Secretary of State, and of the Attorney General, were scrupulously examined and weighed. No lawyer could have

been better in such a consultation than Mr. Lewis, who was fertile in the suggestion of doubts, and quick in the solution of them, and had an admirable coup d'œil to discern the strong and weak points of assault and defence.

That argument of General Hamilton, it should be remeinbered, first enunciated the great rules of interpretation by which the powers delegated by the people of the United States to Congress were to be construed; and they were afterwards tested by the Supreme Tribunal of Federal law, and stood the test then, and for sixty years from the adoption of the Constitution. I hope to be excused for thinking that no juridical argument, before or since, has shaken, or ever will shake, those rules of interpretation; and that none other can maintain the constitutional relations of the States and the United States, the one to the other, and give superiority to each in its proper sphere." "If State rights mean any thing to the contrary of that argument, they mean that the United States shall not be administered by a fair construction of the Constitution, but by the platforms of party."

CHAPTER LXXIV.

THE decision of Washington, as to the incorporation of the Bank; and thus, as to a great commanding princi ple in the construction of the powers of the National Government, increased Hamilton's importance with the nation; and stimulated the hostility of the VIRGINIA TRIO. It was to them a sore disappointment. The early preparation of the cabinet opinions, the character, tone and drift of those opinions, the assured hope of success, in the preparation by Madison of a veto of the Bank, the contrivance and the cunning used to precipitate the action of the Presidentall show their intense desire to foil this important meas

ure.

Thus baffled in their expectation of swaying the mind of Washington, these ambitious aspirants the more resolved to interpose obstacles in Congress to every measure that emanated from Hamilton; looked sedulously for means to discredit his systems with the people-and further to extend and more deeply to fix the discontents they had artfully fostered.

Until the Cabinet discus ion of the Bank bill, a social intercourse had been preserved between Hamilton and Jefferson. The conduct of Jefferson on that occasion, was so personally offensive, as to preclude its continuance; especially, after the intimations Hamilton had received of

the hostile purposes cherished towards him, confirmed by the remonstrances of Virginia against his Fiscal system. From that time, their relations were merely official; the notes which passed between them, being in the third person.

The Supplementary Bank bill passed the second of March, two days prior to the period of the dissolution of the first Congress. On the twenty-first of that month, the President departed from Philadelphia to Mount Vernon, escorted by Jefferson and Knox, who soon returned to the seat of Government. His absence was the time selected for carrying into effect the plans of the opposition; quickened into activity by an impression of Jefferson, that the President intended, "to retire from the Government" at the expiration of his term of office.*

Should he adhere to a purpose, seriously deprecated by the Federalists, Adams would be the prominent candidate for the Chief Magistracy. His votes on the several close divisions of the Senate, had defeated the designs of the Anti-federalists. He would naturally be supported by the friends of, and, it was supposed, would lend all the influence of office to sustain, the policy which had prevailed.

During his residence in Europe, Adams wrote a treatise on the American Constitutions, designed to show the importance to stable liberty, of a balanced Government, On his return to the United States, he caused to be republished a series of letters on American affairs, written immediately after his sudden departure from Paris to Amsterdam.

Their publication commenced with the opening of the

* Jefferson's Works, iv., 455, an impression founded on a letter to him from Washington, dated April 1, 1791: "The most superb edifices may be erected, and I shall wish their inhabitants much happiness; and that too, very disinterestedly, as I shall never be of the number myself.”