will be observed, that Justice Story gives no opinion as to whether the issues of such banks are constitutional, whether they conflict or not with the power of Congress to regulate coin or commerce. He only says (and the limitation is most significant), they do not violate the prohibition as to bills of credit (from which I dissent); but he does declare that to Congress belongs '_the entire regulation of the currency_.' Now this power must rest on the authority of Congress to regulate coin and commerce. But these powers, we have seen, were not concurrent, but _exclusive_; and, in the language of Chief Justice Marshall, in delivering the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court in the case before quoted from 4 Wheaton 193, as to any such power that 'should be exercised _exclusively_ by Congress, the subject is as _completely_ taken from the State Legislature as if they had been _forbidden to act on it_.' All then who agree that Congress has 'the entire regulation of the currency,' must admit that all banks of issue incorporated by States are unconstitutional, not because such issues are bills of credit, but because they violate the exclusive authority of Congress to regulate commerce, coin, and its value. I repeat, that while this question has never been adjudicated by the Supreme Court, yet, if their decision in fourth and ninth Wheaton is maintained, such bank issues are clearly unconstitutional. It is clear, also, whatever may be the case of bank issues, based only 'upon private capital,' or, in the language of Judge Story, 'if the corporate stock, and that only by the charter, is made liable for the debts of the bank,' yet, if the bank issues are based on the 'funds' or 'credit' of the State, such issues do violate the prohibition against bills of credit. Such bank issues, then, as are furnished and countersigned by State officers, acting under State laws, and are secured by the deposit with the State of its own stock, are most clearly unconstitutional. In No. 44 (by Hamilton) of the _Federalist_, the great contemporaneous exposition of the Constitution (prepared by Hamilton, Madison, and Chief Justice Jay of the Supreme Court of the United States), it is said: 'The same reasons which show the necessity of denying to the States the power of regulating coin, prove with equal force that they ought not to be at liberty to substitute a paper medium instead of coin.' Such was the opinion of the two great founders of the Constitution (Hamilton and Madison), and its first judicial expositor, the eminent Chief Justice Jay. Justice Story quotes and approves this remarkable passage, and says 'that the prohibition was aimed at a _paper medium_ which was intended to _circulate as money_, and to that alone.'