its utter disregard of law. In this first return, it not only proclaimed to the Legislature and people of Pennsylvania that it had disregarded its trust as assignee of the old Bank, by seizing upon the whole of the old circulation and converting it to its own use, but that it had violated one of the fundamental provisions of its new charter." Mr. Calhoun spoke chiefly to the question of the _right_ of Congress to pass a bill of the tenor proposed. Several senators denied that right others supported it--among them Mr. Wright, Mr. Grundy, Mr. William H. Roane, Mr. John M. Niles, Mr. Clay, of Alabama, and Mr. Calhoun. Some passages from the speech of the latter are here given. "He [Mr. Calhoun] held that the right proposed to be exercised in this case rested on the general power of legislation conferred on Congress, which embraces not only the power of making, but that of repealing laws. It was, in fact, a portion of the repealing power. No one could doubt the existence of the right to do either, and that the right of repealing extends as well to unconstitutional as constitutional laws. The case as to the former was, in fact, stronger than the latter; for, whether a constitutional law should be repealed or not, was a question of expediency, which left us free to act according to our discretion; while, in the case of an unconstitutional law, it was a matter of obligation and duty, leaving no option; and the more unconstitutional, the more imperious the obligation and duty. Thus far, there could be no doubt nor diversity of opinion. But there are many laws, the effects of which do not cease with their repeal or expiration, and which require some additional act on our part to arrest or undo them. Such, for instance, is the one in question. The charter of the late bank expired some time ago, but its notes are still in existence, freely circulating from hand to hand, and reissued and banked on by a bank chartered by the State of Pennsylvania, into whose possession the notes of the old bank have passed. In a word, our name and authority are used almost as freely for banking purposes as they were before the expiration of the charter of the late bank. Now, he held that the right of arresting or undoing these after-effects rested on the same principle as the right of repealing a law, and, like that, embraces unconstitutional as well as constitutional acts, superadding, in the case of the former, obligation and duty to right. We have an illustration of the truth of this principle in the case of the alien and sedition acts, which are now conceded on all sides to have been unconstitutional. Like the act incorporating the late bank, they expired by their own limitation; and, like it, also, their effects continued after the period of their expiration.