Osborn

V.

cree of the Circuit Court for the district of Ohio, 1824. so far as it directs restitution of the specific sum of 98,000 dollars, which was taken out of the Bank unlawfully, and was in the possession of the U. S. Bank. defendant, Samuel Sullivan, when the injunction was awarded, in September, 1820, to restrain him from paying it away, or in any manner using it; and so far as it directs the payment of the remaining sum of 2000 dollars, by the defendants, Ralph Osborne and John L. Harper; but that the same is erroneous, so far as respects the interest on the coin, part of the said 98,000 dollars, it being the opinion of this Court, that, while the parties were restrained by the authority of the Circuit Court from using it, they ought not to be charged with interest. The decree of the Circuit Court for the district of Ohio is affirmed, as to the said sums of 98,000 dollars, and 2000 dollars; and reversed, as to the residue.

Mr. Justice JOHNSON. The argument in this cause presents three questions: 1. Has Congress granted to the Bank of the United States, an unlimited right of suing in the Courts of the United States? 2. Could Congress constitutionally grant such a right? and 3. Has the power of the Court been legally and constitutionally exercised in this suit?

I have very little doubt that the public mind will be easily reconciled to the decision of the Court here rendered; for, whether necessary or unnecessary originally, a state of things has now grown up, in some of the States, which renders all

1824.

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the protection necessary, that the general goverment can give to this Bank. The policy of the decision is obvious, that is, if the Bank is to be susU.S.Bank. tained; and few will bestow upon its legal correctness, the reflection, that it is necessary to test

V.

it by the constitution and laws, under which it is rendered.

vernment.

The Bank of the United States, is now identified with the administration of the national goIt is an immense machine, economically and beneficially applied to the fiscal transactions of the nation. Attempts have been made to dispense with it, and they have failed; serious and very weighty doubts have been entertained of its constitutionality, but they have been abandoned; and it is now become the functionary that collects, the depository that holds, the vehicle that transports, the guard that protects, and the agent that distributes and pays away, the millions that pass annually through the national treasury; and all this, not only without expense to the government, but after paying a large bonus, and sustaining actual annual losses to a large amount; furnishing the only possible means of embodying the most ample security for so immense a charge.

Had its effects, however, and the views of its framers, been confined exclusively to its fiscal uses, it is more than probable that this suit, and the laws in which it originated, would never have had existence. But it is well known, that with that object was combined another, of a very general, and not less important character.

The expiration of the charter of the former Bank, led to State creations of Banks; each new Bank in

creased the facilities of creating others; and the necessities of the general government, both to make use of the State Banks for their deposits, and to borrow largely of all who would lend to them, produced that rage for multiplying Banks, which, aided by the emoluments, derived to the States in their creation, and the many individual incentives which they developed, soon inundated the country with a new description of bills of credit, against which it was obvious that the provisions of the constitution opposed no adequate inhibition.

A specie-paying Bank, with an overwhelming capital, and the whole aid of the government deposits, presented the only resource to which the government could resort, to restore that power over the currency of the country, which the framers of the constitution evidently intended to give to Congress alone. But this necessarily involved a restraint upon individual cupidity, and the exercise of State power; and, in the nature of things, it was hardly possible for the mighty effort necessary to put down an evil spread so wide, and arrived to such maturity, to be made without embodying against it an immense moneyed combination, which could not fail of making its influence to be felt, wherever its claimances could reach, or its industry and wealth be brought to operate.

I believe, that the good sense of a people, who know that they govern themselves, and feel that they have no interests distinct from those of their government, would readily concede to the Bank, thus circumstanced, some, if not all the rights here VOL. IX.

110

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U.S. Bank.

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Osborn

V.

U. S. Bank.

contended for. But I cannot persuade myself, that they have been conceded in the extent which this decision affirms. Whatever might be proper to be done by an amendment of the constitution, this Court is only, at present, expounding its existing provisions.

In the present instance, I cannot persuade myself, that the constitution sanctions the vesting of the right of action in this Bank, in cases in which the privilege is exclusively personal, or in any case, merely on the ground that a question might possibly be raised in it, involving the constitution, or. constitutionality of a law, of the United States.

When laws were heretofore passed for raising a revenue by a duty on stamped paper, the tax was quietly acquiesced in, notwithstanding it entrenched so closely on the unquestionable power of the States over the law of contracts; but had the same law which declared void contracts not written upon stamped paper, declared, that every person holding such paper should be entitled to bring his action "in any Circuit Court" of the United States, it is confidently believed that there could have been but one opinion on the constitutionality of such a provision. The whole jurisdiction over contracts, might thus have been taken from the State Courts, and conferred upon those of the United States. Nor would the evil have rested there; by a similar exercise of power, imposing a stamp on deeds generally, jurisdiction over the territory of the State, whoever might be parties, even between citizens of the same State-jurisdiction of suits instituted for the recovery of legacies

Osborn

V.

U. S. Bank.

or distributive portions of intestates' estates-juris- 1821. diction, in fact, over almost every possible case, might be transferred to the Courts of the United States. Wills may be required to be executed on stamped paper; taxes may be, and have been, imposed upon legacies and distributions; and, in all such cases, there is not only a possibility, but a probability, that a question may arise, involving the constitutionality, construction, &c. of a law of the United States. If the circumstance, that the questions which the case involves, are to determine its character, whether those questions be made in the case or not, then every case here alluded to, may as well be transferred to the jurisdiction of the United States, as those to which this Bank is a party. But still farther, as was justly insisted in argument, there is not a tract of land in the United States, acquired under laws of the United States, whatever be the number of mesne transfers that it may have undergone, over which the jurisdiction of the Courts of the United States might not be extended by Congress, upon the very principle on which the right of suit in this Bank is here maintained. Nor is the case of the alien, put in argument, at all inapplicable. The one acquires its character of individual property, as the other does his political existence, under a law of the United States; and there is not a suit which may be instituted to recover the one, nor an action of ejectment to be brought by the other, in which a right acquired under a law of the United States, does not lie as essentially at the basis of the right of action, as in the suits brought by this Bank.