Let me remind you, then, in the first place, Sir, that, commercial as the country is, and having experienced as it has done, and experiencing as it now does, great vicissitudes of trade and business, it is almost forty years since any law has been in force by which any honest man, failing in business, could be effectually discharged from debt by surrendering his property.  The former bankrupt law was repealed on the 19th of December, 1803.  From that day to this, the condition of an insolvent, however honest and worthy, has been utterly hopeless, so far as he depended on any legal mode of relief.  This state of things has arisen from the peculiar provisions of the Constitution of the United States, and from the omission by Congress to exercise this branch of its constitutional power.  By the Constitution, the States are prohibited from passing laws impairing the obligation of contracts.  Bankrupt laws impair the obligation of contracts, if they discharge the bankrupt from his debts without payment.  The States, therefore, cannot pass such laws.  The power, then, is taken from the States, and placed in our hands.  It is true that it has been decided, that, in regard to contracts entered into after the passage of any State bankrupt law, between the citizens of the State having such law, and sued in the State courts, a State discharge may prevail.  So far, effect has been given to State laws.  I have great respect, habitually, for judicial decisions; but it has nevertheless, I must say, always appeared to me that the distinctions on which these decisions are founded are slender, and that they evade, without answering, the objections founded on the great political and commercial objects intended to be secured by this part of the Constitution.  But these decisions, whether right or wrong, afford no effectual relief.  The qualifications and limitations which I have stated render them useless, as to the purpose of a general discharge.  So much of the concerns of every man of business is with citizens of other States than his own, and with foreigners, that the partial extent to which the validity of State discharges reaches is of little benefit.

The States, then, cannot pass effectual bankrupt laws; that is, effectual for the discharge of the debtor.  There is no doubt that most, if not all, the States would now pass such laws, if they had the power; although their legislation would be various, interfering, and full of all the evils which the Constitution of the United States intended to provide against.  But they have not the power; Congress, which has the power, does not exercise it.  This is the peculiarity of our condition.  The States would pass bankrupt laws, but they cannot; we can, but we will not.  And between this want of power in the States and want of will in Congress, unfortunate insolvents are left to hopeless bondage.  There are probably one or two hundred thousand debtors, honest, sober, and industrious, who drag out lives useless to themselves, useless to their families, and useless to their country, for no reason but that they cannot be legally discharged from debts in which misfortunes have involved them, and which there is no possibility of their ever paying.  I repeat, again, that these cases have now been accumulating for a whole generation.