in his view, at that time unconstitutional. But now he beheld specie payments suspended. He saw about three hundred banking institutions which had lost the public confidence in a greater or less degree, and which were exercising what had always and everywhere been considered “one of the highest attributes of sovereignty,” namely, the “regulation of the current medium of the country.” They were no longer capable of aiding, but were really obstructing, the operations of the Treasury. To renew specie payments and to prevent further disaster and distress a national bank now appeared to him “not only necessary, but indispensably necessary.” Under these circumstances, therefore, he considered the chartering of a national bank constitutional. “He preferred,” he added, “to the suggestions of the pride of opinion the evident interests of the community, and determined to throw himself upon their candor and justice. Had he in 1811 foreseen what now existed, and no objection had lain against the renewal of the charter other than that derived from the Constitution, he should have voted for the renewal.”
This was virtually a confession that he had seriously mistaken the situation of things in 1811, when, against Gallatin's judgment, he had helped in disarranging the fiscal machinery of the government on the eve of a war. But it was a confession, too, that he had thrown overboard that constitutional theory according to which such things as the power of chartering corporations, not being
