Here, again, the power of class domination of Government came into compelling effect. The onward sweep of the trading class was not to be balked by such a trifling obstacle as a Constitutional provision. At all times when the Constitution has stood in the way of commercial aims it has been abrogated, not by repeal nor violent overthrow, but by the effective expedient of judicial interpretation. The trading class demanded State created banks with power of issuing money; and, as the courts have invariably in the long run responded to the interests and decrees of the dominant class, a decision was quickly forthcoming in this case to the effect that "bills of credit" were not meant to cover banknotes. This was a new and surprising construction; but judicial decision and precedent made it virtually law, and law a thousandfold more binding than any Constitutional insertion. COURTS AND CONSTITUTION. The trading class had already learned the importance of the principle that while it was essential to control law-making bodies, it was imperative to have as their auxiliary the bodies that interpreted law. To a large extent the United States since then has lived not under legislative-made law, but under a purely separate and extraneous form of law which has superseded the legislature product, namely, court law. Although nowhere in the United States Constitution is there even the suggestion that courts shall make law, yet this past century and more they have been gradually building up a formidable code of interpretations which substantially ranks as the most commanding kind of law. And these interpretations have, on the whole, consistently followed, and kept pace with, the changing interests of the dominant class, whether traders, slaveholders, or the present trusts. This decision of the august courts opened the way for the greatest orgy of corruption and the most stupendous frauds. In New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and other States a continuous rush to get bank charters ensued. Most of the legislatures were composed of men who, while perhaps, not innately corrupt, were easily seduced by the corrupt temptations held out by the traders. There was a deep-seated hostility, in many parts of the country, on the part of the middling tradesmen--the shopkeepers and the petty merchants--to any laws calculated to increase the power and the privileges of the superior traders and the landowners. Among the masses of workers, most of whom were, however, disfranchised, any attempt to vest the rich with new privileges, was received with the bitterest resentment. But the legislatures were approachable; some members who were put there by the rich families needed only the word as to how they should vote, while others, representing both urban and rural communities, were swayed by bribes. By one means or another the traders and landholders forced the various legislatures into doing what was wanted.