nited 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
un