nothing less, and nothing else,
than the old dispensing power asserted by the kings of England in the
worst of times; the very climax, indeed, of all the preposterous
pretensions of the Tudor and the Stuart races. According to the
doctrines put forth by the President, although Congress may have passed
a law, and although the Supreme Court may have pronounced it
constitutional, yet it is, nevertheless, no law at all, if he, in his
good pleasure, sees fit to deny it effect; in other words, to repeal
and annul it. Sir, no President and no public man ever before advanced
such doctrines in the face of the nation. There never before was a
moment in which any President would have been tolerated in asserting
such a claim to despotic power. After Congress has passed the law, and
after the Supreme Court has pronounced its judgment on the very point in
controversy, the President has set up his own private judgment against
its constitutional interpretation. It is to be remembered, Sir, that it
is the present law, it is the act of 1816, it is the present charter of
the bank, which the President pronounces to be unconstitutional. It is
no bank _to be created_, it is no law proposed to be passed, which he
denounces; it is the _law now existing_, passed by Congress, approved by
President Madison, and sanctioned by a solemn judgment of the Supreme
Court, which he now declares unconstitutional, and which, of course, so
far as it may depend on him, cannot be executed. If these opinions of
the President be maintained, there is an end of all law and all judicial
authority. Statutes are but recommendations, judgments no more than
opinions. Both are equally destitute of binding force. Such a universal
power as is now claimed for him, a power of judging over the laws and
over the decisions of the judiciary, is nothing else but pure despotism.
If conceded to him, it makes him at once what Louis the Fourteenth
proclaimed himself to be when he said, "I am the State."

The Supreme Court has unanimously declared and adjudged that the
existing bank _is_ created by a constitutional law of Congress. As has
been before observed, this bank, so far as the present question is
concerned, is like that which was established in 1791 by Washington, and
sanctioned by the great men of that day. In every form, therefore, in
which the question can be raised, it has been raised and has been
settled. Every process and every mode of trial known to the Constitution
an