y taking their
notes in deposit, and for exchange, only so long as they
continue to be redeemed with specie. In times of public
emergency, the capacities of such an institution might be
enlarged by legislative provisions.

"These suggestions are made, not so much as a recommendation,
as with a view of calling the attention of congress to the
possible modifications of a system, which cannot continue to
exist in its present form without occasional collisions with
the local authorities, and perpetual apprehensions and
discontent on the part of the states and the people."

When the president's views, as here disclosed, are analyzed, they seem
to involve the following propositions, to each of which we will give a
separate consideration.

1. That the present Bank of the United States is unconstitutional.

2. That it exercises a dangerous influence.

3. That it creates discontent with the people, and collisions with the
states.

4. That such a bank as is proposed in its place, is free from all these
objections.

1. On the constitutionality of the bank, we have little to add to the
remarks made on the subject in our last number. The arguments then urged
having received no answer, and being, as we conceive, unanswerable, we
must consider that the more the question is investigated, the more it
will be found that a power which has been recognised by every branch of
the government, and at some time or other, by every party that has
administered the affairs of the nation, will be found to be correct. We
cannot, however, forbear to add one other, because of its peculiar
fitness to the present occasion.

It is known, that the power of the general government to establish a
national bank, mainly turns on that clause of the Constitution of the
United States, which gives congress the power "to make all laws which
shall be _necessary and proper_ for carrying into execution" the powers
specifically granted--one party deducing the constitutionality of the
bank from a liberal interpretation of the word "necessary," and the
other drawing the opposite inference from their interpreting the same
word in a narrower sense; both reasoning justly from their respective
premises, and both agreeing, that on the true meaning of that term, rest
the merits of the controversy.

Whenever a doubt occurs about the meaning of a phrase in a written
instrument, it has always been considered a good rule