160 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



" Sir, this is a tremendous issue. It is the 

 boldest attempt at outrage on the people, as it 

 seems to me, in the whole range of our finan- 

 cial history. It is not equaled even by the 

 act of March, 1869; for while that act plun- 

 ders the tax-payers of hundreds of millions 

 they never agreed to pay, yet its grasp at 

 power was not so great as we are now con- 

 fronted with. This demand upon us to destroy 

 at one fell blow nearly three hundred and fifty 

 millions of the debt-paying money now in use 

 comes as that of the President, but it is not 

 merely his. It is the demand of more than 

 two thousand national banks organized as the 

 National Bank Association, that Congress shall 

 abandon to them the absolute control of every 

 feature of our financial system. The President 

 in his message simply speaks for them when he 

 attempts to excite distrust against United States 

 notes made by law a legal tender. It is evident 

 they think no money should reach the people 

 except through their own agency. If the 

 greenback currency was swept from existence 

 the banks would have the financial field to 

 themselves, and their currency, with its profits 

 to them and its expense to the people, would 

 soon fill the place of that which had disap- 

 peared. This is the vast stake for which the 

 money power now plays. It involves not only 

 millions, but power. It involves the abdica- 

 tion by Congress of all its powers over the 

 currency and the surrender of the whole sub- 

 ject to a moneyed autocracy before which 

 every interest and every department of this 

 Government will be powerless. 



" Such corporation wealth and far-reaching 

 financial dominion as that to which the Na- 

 tional Banking Association now aspires have 

 hardly a parallel in the history of the world. 

 Is it not time to look to the terms and the 

 principles of the Constitution? In whose 

 hands does that instrument place the power 

 to create a circulating medium for the use of 

 the people ? We constantly hear about the 

 duty of driving the financial question out of 

 Congress. To read from day to day the or- 

 gans of the banks, it would appear to be a 

 usurpation on the part of Congress to consider 

 the question at all. From them it would ap- 

 pear that the Federal Government was entirely 

 incompetent to endow its paper currency with 

 debt-paying functions. Such, too, I under- 

 stand to be the position of the able chairman 

 of the Finance Committee of this body. 



" Let us examine briefly and see whether the 

 founders of this Government did in fact fetter 

 its hands and cripple its powers to the extent 

 claimed. In all governments among men sov- 

 ereign power is lodged somewhere. There is 

 always a place beyond which you can go no 

 farther. In the words of William Pitt, in the 

 House of Commons, in 1799: "In every gov- 

 ernment there must reside somewhere a su- 

 preme, absolute, and unlimited authority." 

 Sovereignly is rightfully claimed on some sub- 

 jects by the States of this Union, and with equal 



justice by the Federal Government on other 

 subjects. Each has a limited sphere of sover- 

 eignty beyond which it can not go. Each has 

 prescribed bounds, and there must stop. But 

 with the people, back of all Federal and State 

 governments, is lodged the supreme, absolute, 

 and unlimited authority from which emanate 

 all constitutions, laws, and policies. They can 

 bind and they can loosen. They made the 

 government of the States, and they made the 

 Federal Government. Chief-Justice Marshall, 

 the master mind of American jurisprudence, in 

 deciding the case of McCulloch vs. The State 

 of Maryland, says: 



" The Government of the Union, then (whatever 

 may be the influence of this fact on the case), is em- 

 phatically and truly a Government of the people. In 

 lorm and in substance it emanates from them. Its 

 powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised 

 directly on them and for their benefit. 



" The great purposes for which the people 

 created the Government of the Union are also 

 specifically declared. In the decision just 

 cited, Chief-Justice Marshall again says : 



" The Government proceeds directly from the peo- 

 ple, is ordained and established in the name of the 

 people, and is declared to be ordained in order to form 

 a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domes- 

 tic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, pro- 

 mote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of 

 liberty to ourselves and our posterity. 



"With these purposes in view purposes as 

 beneficent, as vas4, far-reaching, and glorious 

 as ever sustained the hopes of the human race 

 did the framers of that sacred instrument, 

 the Constitution, make a close and narrow 

 limitation of the means by which to carry 

 them out? We have heard much, throughout 

 all our history, of strict constructionists of the 

 Constitution. I hope and believe that I be- 

 long to that party. I am in favor, however, 

 of strictly construing the Constitution for the 

 accomplishment of the great and declared ends 

 of Government, rather than for their defeat. 

 I believe the power to carry out and establish 

 these ends is vested by the Constitution in the 

 Government of the United States. By the last 

 clause of section 8 of the first article of the 

 Constitution it is declared that Congress shall 

 have power 



" To make all laws which shall be necessary and 

 proper for carrying into execution the foregoing 

 powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitu- 

 tion in the Government of the United States, or in 

 any department or officer thereof. 



"That is a broad and sweeping provision, 

 and it has been held to bestow a wide discre- 

 tion upon Congress in the selection of the 

 necessary and proper means with which to 

 execute the powers of the Government and to 

 fulfill the purposes of its creation. The de- 

 cision of the present Supreme Court of the 

 United States, in 12 Wallace, holding the laws 

 creating legal-tender notes to be constitutional 

 on the ground that such a currency was neces- 

 sary for the preservation of the Government, 

 has been harshly criticised. The Senator from 



