As to the taxing power of the States, about which the message says so much, the proper answer to all it says is, that the States possess no power to tax any instrument of the government of the United States.  It was no part of their power before the Constitution, and they derive no such power from any of its provisions.  It is nowhere given to them.  Could a State tax the coin of the United States at the mint?  Could a State lay a stamp tax on the process of the courts of the United States, and on custom-house papers?  Could it tax the transportation of the mail, or the ships of war, or the ordnance, or the muniments of war, of the United States?  The reason that these cannot be taxed by a State is, that they are means and instruments of the government of the United States.  The establishment of a bank exempt from State taxation takes away no existing right in a State.  It leaves it all it ever possessed.  But the complaint is, that the bank charter does not confer the power of taxation.  This, certainly, though not a new, (for the same argument was urged here,) appears to me to be a strange, mode of asserting and maintaining State rights.  The power of taxation is a sovereign power; and the President and those who think with him are of opinion, in a given case, that this sovereign power should be conferred on the States by an act of Congress.  There is, if I mistake not, Sir, as little compliment to State sovereignty in this idea, as there is of sound constitutional doctrine.  Sovereign rights held under the grant of an act of Congress present a proposition quite new in constitutional law.

The President himself even admits that an instrument of the government of the United States ought not, as such, to be taxed by the States; yet he contends for such a power of taxing property connected with this instrument, and essential to its very being, as places its whole existence in the pleasure of the States.  It is not enough that the States may tax all the property of all their own citizens, wherever invested or however employed.  The complaint is, that the power of State taxation does not reach so far as to take cognizance over persons out of the State, and to tax them for a franchise lawfully exercised under the authority of the United States.  Sir, when did the power of the States, or indeed of any government, go to such an extent as that?  Clearly never.  The taxing power of all communities is necessarily and justly limited to the property of its own citizens, and to the property of others, having a distinct local existence as property, within its jurisdiction; it does not extend to rights and franchises, rightly exercised, under the authority of other governments, nor to persons beyond its jurisdiction.  As the Constitution has left the taxing power of the States, so the bank charter leaves it.  Congress has not undertaken either to take away, or to confer, a taxing power; nor to enlarge, or to restrain it; if it were to do either, I hardly know which of the two would be the least excusable.