State and Federal Bills of Credit, Etc. [pp. 455-485]

1853.j Bills of Credit. 463
no one can calmly and dispassionately trace out the opinions and
decisions of these gentlemen, in the two cases, reported in 4th and
11th Peters-that is, if he views them in connection with the political aspects of the two great parties of the country at the time
they were given, and the peculiar relation existing between the
respective members of the bench and these parties, through their
political principles-without concluding, on the one hand, that the
decision made by Chief Justice Marsha]l, in the case of Craig,
and afterwards reiterated by Justice Story, in his dissenting opinion,
in the case of Briscoe, was, in many respects, the result of a desire
on their part to throw banking powers into the hands of the General
or Central Government, by circumscribing the powers of the States
in respect thereto, and thereby creating a necessity for those powers
in the Central Government; and, discovering, on the other hand, that
Mr. Justice McLane, while composing his decision in the case of
Briscoc, in behalf of the Court, so entirely in reversal of the principles decided in the case of Craig;-being of the democratic school
of politics, and also a candidate for high popular f~vour, sought, in
turn, to strengthen the State Governments against the Central Government;-and, seeing that the Bank of the United States had
grown odious to the country, most "awfully squinted through the
medium of this opinion at the Chief Magistracy!" Seeing then the
difficulty of reaching a correct solution of the constitutional phrase
"~i11s of Credit," that we can find nothing conclusive thereon in
the respective definitions furnished by the Justices of the Supreme
Bench-nor definitive in their respective opinions-nor satisfactory
in their respective judgments-nothing in ~hem, indeed, but a mass
of differences and contradictions-we are constrained to look beyond
them,-to look ~fther, and to endeavour, with what feeble light we
have, to gather the ideas which history affords on the subject.
By tracing out the chain of idea on the subject, in history, so far
as we have been able to reach it, from the time of the Revolution in
England, of 1688, or the ascension of the throne by William and
Mary, to the time of our Revolution, and the after-adoption of the
Constitution in 1 ~88, and scanning the whole in conjunction with
all that has been said by counsel in their arguments, justices in
their opinions, and the courts in their judgments, in the case of
"Craig Vs. The State of Missouri," (4 Peters, 410, etc.,) and that of