University of Virginia Library

TO C. E. HAYNES.[131]

Dear Sir,—I have received the copy of Judge
Clayton's Review of the "Report of the Committee
of Ways and Means," for which the envelope informs
me that I am indebted to your politeness.

A perusal of the review has left an impression
highly favourable to the talents of the author and
to the accomplishments of his pen. But I cannot
concur in his views and reasonings on some of the
material points in discussion; and I must be permitted
to think he has done injustice in the remark,
"that I seem to have surrendered all my early
opinions at discretion."

I am far from regarding a change of opinions, under
the lights of experience and the results of improved
reflection, as exposed to censure; and still farther from
the vanity of supposing myself less in need of that
privilege than others. But I had indulged the
belief that there were few, if any, of my contemporaries,
through the long period and varied scenes
of my political life, to whom a mutability of opinion
was less applicable, on the great constitutional
questions which have agitated the public mind.

The case to which the Judge more especially referred,
was, doubtless, that of the Bank, which I had
originally opposed as unauthorized by the Constitution,
and to which I at length gave my official assent.
But even here the inconsistency is apparent only,
not real; inasmuch as my abstract opinion of the text

of the Constitution is not changed, and the assent
was given in pursuance of my early and unchanged
opinion, that, in the case of a Constitution as of a
law, a course of authoritative expositions sufficiently
deliberate, uniform, and settled, was an evidence
of the public will necessarily overruling individual
opinions. It cannot be less necessary that the
meaning of a Constitution should be freed from uncertainty,
than that the law should be so. That
cases may occur which transcend all authority of
precedents must be admitted, but they form exceptions
which will speak for themselves and must
justify themselves.

I do not forget that the chain of sanctions to the
bank power has been considered as broken by a
veto of Vice President Clinton to a bill establishing
a bank. But it is believed to be quite certain, that
the equality of votes which referred the question
to his casting vote was occasioned by a union of some,
who disapproved the plan of the bank only, with
those who denied its constitutionality; and that, on a
naked question of constitutionality, a majority of the
Senate would have added another sanction, as at a
later period was done, to the validity of such an
institution.

If this explanation should be found obtrusive, I
hope you will recollect that you have been accessory
to it, and that it will not prevent an acceptance of
the respectful salutations which are cordially offered.