Edward Douglass White

“ The argument that the concession of a right on the part of a state to forbid the taking of real estate by a national bank for an antecedent debt, under any circumstances, implies the existence of a power in the state to forbid such taking in all cases, begs the question, and amounts simply to a restatement of the proposition already answered. ”

“ No function of such banks is destroyed or hampered by allowing the banks to exercise the power to take real estate, provided only they do so under the same conditions and restrictions to which all the other citizens of the state are subjected, one of which limitations arises from the provisions of the state law which, in case of insolvency, seeks to forbid preferences between creditors. Of course, in the broadest sense, any limitation by a state on the making of contracts is a restraint upon the power of a national bank within the state to make such contracts ”

“ The claim that the security vested in the bank by the conveyance of the land is taken away from it in violation of the United States law, because, under the Massachusetts law, a contract by a debtor giving a fraudulent preference to one creditor over another is voidable, and not void, is without merit. This contention concedes that, if the state law rendered the transaction void, there would be a valid exercise of state authority. But the power to do the greater necessarily carries with it the right to do the lesser. ”