The system of national banks may or may
not be a good and desirable system, but it is difficult to
understand the constitutional power of the General government to
establish it.
On the ground that its powers are general, not particular, the
General government has no power to lay a protective tariff. It
can lay a tariff for revenue, not for protection of home
manufactures or home industry; for the interests fostered, even
though indirectly advantageous to the whole people, are in their
nature private or particular, not general interests, and chiefly
interests of private corporations and capitalists. Their
incidental or even consequential effects do not change their
direct and essential nature. So with domestic slavery. Slavery
comes under the head of private rights, whether regarded on the
side of the master or on the side of the slave. The right of a
citizen to hold a slave, if a right at all, is the private right
of property, and the right of the slave to his freedom is a
private and personal right, and neither is placed under the
safeguard of the General government, which has nowhere, unless
in the District of Columbia and the places over which it has
exclusive legislative power in all cases whatsoever, either the
right to establish it or to abolish it, except perhaps under the
war power, as a military necessity, an indemnity for the past,
or a security for the future.
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