nd_ for the payment and liquidation of
said loans. The bill, as the title purports, simply provides for
the transfer of the stock now held by the State in the Planters'
Bank, and that the same shall be invested in the stock of the
Mississippi Railroad Company, leading from Natchez to Canton, which
has banking privileges to twice the amount of capital stock paid
in. The transferring of the stock and dividend to another
irresponsible corporation, and the appropriation of the same to the
construction of a road, is a violation of and impairing the
obligation of the contract made and entered into with the
purchasers or holders of the bonds of the State, under a solemn act
of the Legislature. If it should be thought that a people, composed
of so much virtue, honor, and chivalry, as the noble and generous
Mississippians, would disdain, and consequently refrain, from
repealing or violating their plighted faith, it may be answered,
that the faith of the State, solemnly and sacredly pledged by an
act of the Legislature, with all the formality and solemnity of a
constitutional law, is violated by the provisions of this very bill
under consideration. The faith of the State is pledged to the
holders of the bonds, by the original and subsequent acts
incorporating the Planters' Bank, as solemnly as national or
legislative pledges can be made, that the stock and dividends
accruing thereon shall be faithfully appropriated to the redemption
and payment of said loans and all interest thereon, as they
respectively become due; the appropriation of this fund to an other
purpose is, therefore, a violation of the faith of the State.'
(House Jour. 443.)

Thus was it, that the stock of the bank, which for so many years had
been yielding a dividend far exceeding the interest on the loan, and
which stock had been pledged for the redemption of the loan, was
diverted to the building of a railroad, which never did or could yield a
single dollar, and the company soon became insolvent. By another clause
of this act of 1839, the Planters' Bank, which, by the loan act, was
made responsible (together with the State) for the payment of these
bonds, was released from the obligation to make such payments.

And now, what is the answer of Jefferson Davis on this subject? He says,
in his letter of the 25th May, 1849, before quoted: