Peter Vivian Daniel

“ The power to sell or assign discounted notes cannot be deduced from the clause in the charter which authorizes the exercise of the usual banking powers granted to the banks of Mississippi, first, because in no charter granted by the State is it shown that such a right is expressly conferred; secondly, it is manifest that a traffic in the sale of its own paper, or in notes or bills discounted, is conformable neither with the regular functions of a bank, nor reconcilable with the purposes of its institution. ”

“ Could the doctrine of implied powers, in contravention of the express decisions of this court just cited, be extended in its utmost latitude to these statutory corporations, still it would seem difficult, even by the greatest violence of construction, to torture the language of this charter into an expression of the meaning here ascribed to it. The right to acquire and to dispose of effects cannot, by the natural import of language, nor by any received intendment, be made to signify the power to discount bills and notes ”

“ For, after stating that the garnishees became by the service of the summons the debtors of the United States, and ceased to be the debtors of the bank, it goes on to declare, that they owed to the United States what they owed the bank, and nothing more; that, by the just and general principles of set-off, every debtor may pay his creditor with the notes of that creditor, which as to him are an equitable and legal tender. ”

“ The extravagance of the construction contended for on behalf of the plaintiffs may be seen by bringing it to another test. Let it be supposed that the charters of these companies contained not one word about rights and powers of banking, as then permitted to other corporations in the State of Mississippi; suppose, too, they had been silent as to any right to discount bills and notes, and had been limited to the simple power of receiving and possessing goods, chattels, and effects, and of disposing of such effects for the good of the bank ”

“ A pretension like this would forestall and prevent legislation upon every subject. A wholly different state of things would have existed had the assignment to the plaintiffs been made anterior to the repeal of the statute, for then the rights of these parties would have been vested and complete; but the assignment was in this instance subsequent, by more than a year, to the passage of the repealing statute, was a new and separate contract, and entered into with necessary knowledge of its provisions, and made apparently in defiance thereof. ”

“ Banks are usually created for the purpose of making loans, and this in a medium, in theory at least, equal to money; not for the purpose of borrowing, or of raising means to eke out their daily existence by selling off their securities or their own paper. ”

“ Being a mere creature of the law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly or as incidental to its very existence.' In the case of The Bank v. Dandridge, 12 Wheat. 64, this court said, 'Whatever may be the implied powers of aggregate corporations at the common law, and the modes by which those powers are to be carried into operation, corporations created by statute must depend, both for their powers and the mode of exercising them, upon the true construction of the statute itself.' In the case of The Bank of Augusta v. ”