selected
from this House being bribed to act corruptly, as there was that the
twenty-four commissioners had been so bribed. By a reference to
the ninth section of the Bank charter, it will be seen that those
commissioners were John Tilson, Robert K. McLaughlin, Daniel Warm, A.G.
S. Wight, John C. Riley, W. H. Davidson, Edward M. Wilson, Edward L.
Pierson, Robert R. Green, Ezra Baker, Aquilla Wren, John Taylor, Samuel
C. Christy, Edmund Roberts, Benjamin Godfrey, Thomas Mather, A. M.
Jenkins, W. Linn, W. S. Gilman, Charles Prentice, Richard I. Hamilton,
A.H. Buckner, W. F. Thornton, and Edmund D. Taylor.

These are twenty-four of the most respectable men in the State. Probably
no twenty-four men could be selected in the State with whom the people
are better acquainted, or in whose honor and integrity they would
more readily place confidence. And I now repeat, that there is less
probability that those men have been bribed and corrupted, than that
any seven men, or rather any six men, that could be selected from the
members of this House, might be so bribed and corrupted, even though
they were headed and led on by "decided superiority" himself.

In all seriousness, I ask every reasonable man, if an issue be joined
by these twenty-four commissioners, on the one part, and any other
seven men, on the other part, and the whole depend upon the honor and
integrity of the contending parties, to which party would the greatest
degree of credit be due? Again: Another consideration is, that we have
no right to make the examination. What I shall say upon this head I
design exclusively for the law-loving and law-abiding part of the House.
To those who claim omnipotence for the Legislature, and who in the
plenitude of their assumed powers are disposed to disregard the
Constitution, law, good faith, moral right, and everything else, I have
not a word to say. But to the law-abiding part I say, examine the Bank
charter, go examine the Constitution, go examine the acts that the
General Assembly of this State has passed, and you will find just as
much authority given in each and every of them to compel the Bank to
bring its coffers to this hall and to pour their contents upon this
floor, as to compel it to submit to this examination which this
resolution proposes. Why, Sir, the gentleman from Coles, the mover of
this resolution, very lately denied on this floor that the Legislature
had any right to repeal or otherwise meddle with its own a