If we must have a bank with private stockholders, every consideration of sound policy and every impulse of American feeling admonishes that it should be purely American.  Its stockholders should be composed exclusively of our own citizens, who at least ought to be friendly to our Government and willing to support it in times of difficulty and danger.  So abundant is domestic capital that competition in subscribing for the stock of local banks has recently led almost to riots.  To a bank exclusively of American stockholders, possessing the powers and privileges granted by this act, subscriptions for $200,000,000 could be readily obtained.  Instead of sending abroad the stock of the bank in which the Government must deposit its funds and on which it must rely to sustain its credit in times of emergency, it would rather seem to be expedient to prohibit its sale to aliens under penalty of absolute forfeiture.

It is maintained by the advocates of the bank that its constitutionality in all its features ought to be considered as settled by precedent and by the decision of the Supreme Court.  To this conclusion I can not assent.  Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority, and should not be regarded as deciding questions of constitutional power except where the acquiescence of the people and the States can be considered as well settled.  So far from this being the case on this subject, an argument against the bank might be based on precedent.  One Congress, in 1791, decided in favor of a bank; another, in 1811, decided against it.  One Congress, in 1815, decided against a bank; another, in 1816, decided in its favor.  Prior to the present Congress, therefore, the precedents drawn from that source were equal.  If we resort to the States, the expressions of legislative, judicial, and executive opinions against the bank have been probably to those in its favor as 4 to 1.  There is nothing in precedent, therefore, which, if its authority were admitted, ought to weigh in favor of the act before me.

If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the coordinate authorities of this Government.  The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution.  Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others.  It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision.  The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both.  The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.