It is true that the power to create corporations is not granted in terms. Neither is the power to pass any particular law, nor to employ any of the means by which the ends of the government are to be attained. It is not expressly given in cases in which its existence is not controverted. For by the grant of a power to exercise exclusive legislation in the territory which may be ceded by the states to the United States, it is admitted to pass; and in the power "to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property of the United States," it is acknowledged to be implied. In virtue of this clause, has been implied the right to create a government; that is, to create a body politic or corporation of the highest nature; one that, in its maturity, will be able itself to create other corporations. Thus has the constitution itself refuted the argument which contends that, had it been designed to grant so important a power as that of erecting corporations, it would have been mentioned. But this argument is founded on an exaggerated and erroneous conception of the nature of the power. It is not of so transcendent a kind as the reasoning supposes. Viewed in a just light, it is a _mean_ which ought to have been left to implication, rather than an _end_ which ought to have been expressly granted. The power of the government then to create corporations in certain cases being shown, it remained to inquire into the right to incorporate a banking company, in order to enable it the more effectually to accomplish _ends_ which were in themselves lawful. To establish such a right it would be necessary to show the relation of such an institution to one or more of the specified powers of government. It was then affirmed to have a relation more or less direct to the power of collecting taxes, to that of borrowing money, to that of regulating trade between the states, to those of raising, supporting, and maintaining fleets and armies; and in the last place to that which authorizes the making of all needful rules and regulations concerning the property of the United States, as the same had been practised upon by the government. The secretary of the treasury next proceeded, by a great variety of arguments and illustrations, to prove the position that the measure in question was a proper mean for the execution of the several powers which were enumerated, and also contended that the right to employ it resulted from the whole of them taken together. To detail those arguments would occupy too much space, and is the less necessary, because their correctness obviously depends on the correctness of the principles which have been already stated. * * * * * NOTE--No. VI. _See Page 434._