it no further than as to the grant of exclusive privileges. The secretary entertains all the doubts which prevail concerning the utility of such companies, but he cannot fashion to his own mind a reason to induce a doubt that there is a constitutional authority in the United States to establish them. If such a reason were demanded, none could be given, unless it were this: that congress cannot erect a corporation; which would be no better than to say they cannot do it, because they cannot do it,-first presuming an inability, without reason, and then assigning that inability as the cause of itself. Illustrations of this kind might be multiplied without end. They shall, however, be pursued no further.

There is a sort of evidence on this point arising from an aggregate view of the constitution, which is of no inconsiderable weight: The very general power of laying and collecting taxes, and appropriating their proceeds; that of borrowing money indefinitely; that of coining money, and regulating foreign coins; that of making all needful rules and regulations respecting the property of the United States. These powers combined, as well as the reason and nature of the thing, speak strongly this language: that it is the manifest design and scope of the constitution to vest in congress all the powers requisite to the effectual administration of the finances of the United States. As far as concerns this object, there appears to be no parsimony of power.

To suppose, then, that the government is precluded from the employment of so usual and so important an instrument for the administration of its finances as that of a bank, is to suppose what does not coincide with the general tenor and complexion of the constitution, and what is not agreeable to impressions that any new spectator would entertain concerning it. Little less than a prohibitory clause can destroy the strong presumptions which result from the general aspect of the government. Nothing but demonstration should exclude the idea that the power exists. In all questions of this nature, the practice of mankind ought to have great weight against the theories of individuals. The fact, for instance, that all the principal commercial nations have made use of trading corporations or companies for the purpose of external commerce is a satisfactory proof that the establishment of them is an incident to the regulation of the commerce. This other fact, that banks are a usual engine in the administration of national finances, and an ordinary and most effectual instrument of loan, and one which, in this country, has been found essential, pleads strongly against the supposition that a government, clothed with most of

the most important prerogatives of sovereignty in relation to its revenues, its debts, its credits, its defense, its trade, its intercourse with foreign nations, is forbidden to make use of that instrument as an appendage to its own authority.

It has been stated, as an auxiliary test of constitutional authority, to try whether it abridges any pre-existing right of any state or individual. The proposed investigation will stand the most severe examination on this point. Each state may still erect as many banks as it pleases. Every individual may still carry on the banking business to any extent he pleases.

Another criterion may be this: whether the institution or thing has a more direct relation, as to its uses, to the objects of the reserved powers of the state governments than to those of the powers delegated by the United States. This rule, indeed, is less precise than the former, but it may still serve as some guide. Surely a bank has more reference to the objects intrusted to the national government than to those left to the care of the state governments. The common defense is decisive in this comparison.

It is presumed that nothing of consequence in the observations of the secretary of state and the attorney general has been left unnoticed. There are, indeed, a variety of observations of the secretary of state designed to show that the utilities ascribed to a bank, in relation to the collection of taxes and to trade, could be obtained without it, to analyze which would prolong the discussion beyond all bounds. It shall be forborne for two reasons: First, because the report concerning the bank may speak for itself in this respect; and, secondly, because all those observations are grounded on the erroneous idea that the quantum of necessity or utility is the test of a constitutional exercise of power. One or two remarks only shall be made. One is that he has taken no notice of a very essential advantage to trade in general, which is mentioned in the report as peculiar to the existence of a bank circulation, equal, in the public estimation, to gold and silver. It is this that renders it unnecessary to lock up the money of the country, to accumulate for months successively, in order to the periodical payment of interest. The order is this: that his arguments to show that treasury orders and bills of exchange, from the course of trade, will prevent any considerable displacement of the metals, are founded on a particular view of the subject. A case will prove this. The sums collected in a state may be small in comparison with the debt due to it. The balance of its trade, direct and circuitous, with the seat of government, may be even or nearly so. Here, Veeder-16.

then, without bank bills, which in that state answer the purpose of coin, there must be a displacement of the coin in proportion to the difference between the sum collected in the state and that to be paid in it. With bank bills no such displacement would take place, or, as far as it did, it would be gradual and insensible. In many other ways, also, there would be at least a temporary and inconvenient displacement of the coin, even where the course of trade would eventually return it to its proper channels. The difference of the two situations in point of convenience to the treasury can only be appreciated by one who experiences the embarrassments of making provision for the payment of the interest on a stock continually changing place in thirteen different places.

One thing which has been omitted just occurs, although it is not very material to the main argument. The secretary of state affirms that the bill only contemplates a repayment, not a loan, to the government; but here he is certainly mistaken. It is true the government invests in the stock of the bank a sum equal to that it receives on loan; but let it be remembered that it does not, therefore, cease to be a proprietor of the stock, which would be the case if the money received back were in the nature of a payment. It remains a proprietor still, and will share in the profit or loss of the institution, according as the dividend is more or less than the interest it is to pay on the sum borrowed; hence that sum is manifestly, and in the strictest sense, a loan.

LORD STOWELL.

[William Scott, Lord Stowell, eldest son of a coal shipper of Newcastle, and brother of John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, was born Oct. 17, 1745. He was educated at Oxford, where he was graduated in 1764. In the following year he was admitted fellow of University College, and took a B. C. L. degree in 1772. In 1773 he was elected Camden Reader in Ancient History. Meantime, in 1762, he entered as a student at the Middle Temple. Upon his father's death, in 1776, he continued, for a time, the shipping business, and thus acquired practical experience, which was afterwards of value to him. He soon resigned his tutorship, and took chambers in London. Designing to practice in the admiralty and ecclesiastical courts, in 1779 he took the degree of D. C. L., and was soon afterwards admitted as a member of the faculty of advocates at Doctor's Commons. He was called to the bar in 1780. In 1782 he was appointed advocate general to the admiralty, and in the following year registrar of the court of faculties. In 1788 the Bishop of London appointed him judge of the consistory court of London. In the same year he was knighted, and appointed king's advocate general and vicar general for the province of Canterbury. In 1798 he became judge of the high court of admiralty, and was sworn of the privy council. In 1790 he entered parliament. He resigned his office in the consistory court in 1820, but sat as judge in admiralty long after loss of sight and weakness of voice compelled him to employ others to read his judgments. He resigned the latter office in 1828. In 1833 his mind gave way, and he died three years later.]

Lord Stowell had the good fortune, says Twiss, in his life of Lord Eldon, to live in an age peculiarly qualified to exercise and exhibit the high faculties of his mind.

"The greatest maritime questions which had ever presented themselves for adjudication arose in his time out of that great war in which England became the sole occupant of the sea, and held at her girdle the keys of all the harbors upon the globe. Of these questions, most of them of first impression, a large proportion could be determined only by a long and cautious process of reference to principle and induction from analogy. The genius of Lord Stowell, at once profound and expansive, vigorous and acute, impartial and decisive, penetrated, marshaled, and mastered all the difficulties of these complex inquiries, till, having sounded all their depths and shoals, he framed and laid down that great comprehensive chart of maritime law which has become the

rule of his successors and the admiration of the world. What he thus achieved in the wide field of international jurisprudence, he accomplished also, with equal success, in the narrower spheres of ecclesiastical, matrimonial, and testamentary law. And though, where so many excellences stand forth, that of style may seem comparatively immaterial, it is impossible not to notice that scholarlike finish of his judicial compositions, by which they delight the taste of the critic, as by their learning and their logic they satisfy the understanding of the lawyer."

In the eighteen years spent at Oxford, Lord Stowell laid the foundations of his broad and deep scholarship. He began the study of the civil law, not with a view to practice, but as part of a liberal education; but the opportunities of practice in the quiet walks of the civil law, where classical and polite literature have ever flourished, proved too attractive to his active mind. As "Dr. Scott of the Commons" he became a well-known figure in the literary circles of London, and the intimate friend of Johnson, Reynolds, and Burke.

His judicial service began in the consistory court, "where he delivered discourses on the regulation of the domestic forum which would have excited the admiration of Addison for their taste, and of Johnson for their morality." He was peculiarly fitted for the administration of the ecclesiastical law by his strong attachment for the church; and in the temporal jurisdiction of his court, involving the most sacred rights of individuals, and the best interests of society, his benevolent wisdom is indelibly recorded. The cases of Dalrymple, Evans, Loveden, Sullivan, and many others in the reports of Haggard and Phillimore are rare specimens of legal philosophy and practical ethics.

In the Evans case he drew an oft-quoted picture of matrimonial infelicity, and benevolently pointed out the limits of his corrective authority:

"Two persons marry together, both of good moral character, but with something of warmth and sensibility in each of their tempers. The husband is occasionally inattentive. The wife has a vivacity that sometimes offends, and sometimes is offended. Something like unkindness is produced, and is then easily inflamed. The lady broods over petty resentments, which are anxiously fed by the busy whispers of humble confidants. Her complaints, aggravated by their reports, are carried to her relations, and meet, perhaps, with a facility of reception from their honest, but well-intentioned, minds. A state of mutual irritation increases. Something like incivility is continually practicing, and, where it is not practiced, it is continually suspected. Every word, every act, every look has a meaning attached to it. It becomes a contest of spirit, in form, between two persons eager to take, and not absolutely backward to give, mutual offense. At last the husband breaks up the family connection, and breaks it up with circumstances sufficiently expressive of dis