Many of the State elections have already taken place without any knowledge on the part of the people that such a question was to come up.  The representatives may desire a submission of the question to their constituents preparatory to final action upon it, but this high privilege is denied; whatever may be the motives and views entertained by the representatives of the people to induce delay, their assent is to be presumed, and is ever afterwards binding unless their dissent shall be unconditionally expressed at their first session after the passage of this bill into a law.  They may by formal resolution declare the question of assent or dissent to be undecided and postponed, and yet, in opposition to their express declaration to the contrary, their assent is to be implied.  Cases innumerable might be cited to manifest the irrationality of such an inference.  Let one or two in addition suffice.  The popular branch of the legislature may express its dissent by an unanimous vote, and its resolution may be defeated by a tie vote of the senate, and yet the assent is to be implied.  Both branches of the legislature may concur in a resolution of decided dissent, and yet the governor may exert the veto power conferred on him by the State constitution, and their legislative action be defeated, and yet the assent of the legislative authority is implied, and the directors of this contemplated institution are authorized to establish a branch or branches in such State whenever they may find it conducive to the interest of the stockholders to do so; and having once established it they can under no circumstances withdraw it except by act of Congress.  The State may afterwards protest against such unjust inference, but its authority is gone.  Its assent is implied by its failure or inability to act at its first session, and its voice can never afterwards be heard.  To inferences so violent and, as they seem to me, irrational I can not yield my consent.  No court of justice would or could sanction them without reversing all that is established in judicial proceeding by introducing presumptions at variance with fact and inferences at the expense of reason.  A State in a condition of duress would be presumed to speak as an individual manacled and in prison might be presumed to be in the enjoyment of freedom.  Far better to say to the States boldly and frankly, Congress wills and submission is demanded.

It may be said that the directors may not establish branches under such circumstances; but this is a question of power, and this bill invests them with full authority to do so.  If the legislature of New York or Pennsylvania or any other State should be found to be in such condition as I have supposed, could there be any security furnished against such a step on the part of the directors?  Nay, is it not fairly to be presumed that this proviso was introduced for the sole purpose of meeting the contingency referred to?  Why else should it have