It can not be _necessary_ to the character of the bank as a fiscal agent
of the Government that its private business should be exempted from that
taxation to which all the State banks are liable, nor can I conceive it
"_proper_" that the substantive and most essential powers reserved by
the States shall be thus attacked and annihilated as a means of
executing the powers delegated to the General Government. It may be
safely assumed that none of those sages who had an agency in forming or
adopting our Constitution ever imagined that any portion of the taxing
power of the States not prohibited to them nor delegated to Congress was
to be swept away and annihilated as a means of executing certain powers
delegated to Congress.

If our power over means is so absolute that the Supreme Court will not
call in question the constitutionality of an act of Congress the subject
of which "is not prohibited, and is really calculated to effect any of
the objects intrusted to the Government," although, as in the case
before me, it takes away powers expressly granted to Congress and rights
scrupulously reserved to the States, it becomes us to proceed in our
legislation with the utmost caution. Though not directly, our own powers
and the rights of the States may be indirectly legislated away in the
use of means to execute substantive powers. We may not enact that
Congress shall not have the power of exclusive legislation over the
District of Columbia, but we may pledge the faith of the United States
that as a means of executing other powers it shall not be exercised for
twenty years or forever. We may not pass an act prohibiting the States
to tax the banking business carried on within their limits, but we may,
as a means of executing our powers over other objects, place that
business in the hands of our agents and then declare it exempt from
State taxation in their hands. Thus may our own powers and the rights of
the States, which we can not directly curtail or invade, be frittered
away and extinguished in the use of means employed by us to execute
other powers. That a bank of the United States, competent to all the
duties which may be required by the Government, might be so organized as
not to infringe on our own delegated powers or the reserved rights of
the States I do not entertain a doubt. Had the Executive been called
upon to furnish the project of such an institution, the duty would have
been cheerfully performed. In the absence o