728. BANKS, Power to establish.—[further continued].
I still believe that on
proper representations of the subject, a great
proportion of the Legislatures would cede to
Congress their power of establishing banks,
saving the charter rights already granted.
And this should be asked, not by way of
amendment to the Constitution, because until
three-fourths should consent, nothing could
be done; but accepted from them one by one,
singly, as their consent might be obtained.
Any single State, even if no other should
come into the measure, would find its interest
in arresting foreign bank paper immediately,
and its own by degrees. Specie would flow
in on them as paper disappeared. Their own
banks would call in and pay off their notes
gradually, and their constituents would thus
be saved from the general wreck. Should the
greater part of the States concede, as is expected,
their power over banks to Congress,
besides insuring their own safety, the paper of
the non-conceding States might be so checked
and circumscribed, by prohibiting its receipt
in any of the conceding States, and even in
the non-conceding as to duties, taxes, judgments,
or other demands of the United
States, or of the citizens of other States, that
it would soon die of itself, and the medium
of gold and silver be universally restored.
This is what ought to be done. But
it will not be done. Carthago non delibitur.
The overbearing clamor of merchants,
speculators, and projectors, will drive us before
them with our eyes open, until, as in
France, under the Mississippi bubble, our citizens
will be overtaken by the crash of this
baseless fabric, without other satisfaction than
that of execrations on the heads of those functionaries,
who, from ignorance, pusillanimity
or corruption, have betrayed the fruits of
their industry into the hands of projectors
and swindlers.—
To J. W. Eppes. Washington ed. vi, 245.
Ford ed., ix, 415.
(M.
Nov. 1813)
