By the Constitution, Congress is authorized to pass all laws “necessary and proper” for carrying its own legislative powers into effect.  Congress has deemed a bank to be “necessary and proper” for these purposes, and it has therefore established a bank.  But although the law has been passed, and the bank established, and the constitutional validity of its charter solemnly adjudged, yet the President pronounces it unconstitutional, because some of the powers bestowed on the bank are, in his opinion, not necessary or proper.  It would appear that powers which in 1791 and in 1816, in the time of Washington and in the time of Madison, were deemed “necessary and proper,” are no longer to be so regarded, and therefore the bank is unconstitutional.  It has really come to this, that the constitutionality of a bank is to depend upon the opinion which one particular man may form of the utility or necessity of some of the clauses in its charter!  If that individual chooses to think that a particular power contained in the charter is not necessary to the proper constitution of the bank, then the act is unconstitutional!

Hitherto it has always been supposed that the question was of a very different nature.  It has been thought that the policy of granting a particular charter may be materially dependent on the structure and organization and powers of the proposed institution.  But its general constitutionality has never before been understood to turn on such points.  This would be making its constitutionality depend on subordinate questions; on questions of expediency and questions of detail; upon that which one man may think necessary, and another may not.  If the constitutional question were made to hinge on matters of this kind, how could it ever be decided?  All would depend on conjecture; on the complexional feeling, on the prejudices, on the passions, of individuals; on more or less practical skill or correct judgment in regard to banking operations among those who should be the judges; on the impulse of momentary interests, party objects, or personal purposes.  Put the question in this manner to a court of seven judges, to decide whether a particular bank was constitutional, and it might be doubtful whether they could come to any result, as they might well hold very various opinions on the practical utility of many clauses of the charter.

The question in that case would be, not whether the bank, in its general frame, character, and objects, was a proper instrument to carry into effect the powers of the government, but whether the particular powers, direct or incidental, conferred on a particular bank, were better calculated than all others to give success to its operations.  For if not, then the charter, according to this sort of reasoning, would be unwarranted by the Constitution.  This mode of construing the Constitution is certainly a novel discovery.  Its merits belong entirely to the President and his advisers.  According to this rule of interpretation, if the President