Salmon P. Chase

“ What, then, is the true sense of the prohibition to erect, establish, institute, or put in operation any banking company, or to issue any bills or notes with intent or purpose to do so? What is meant by putting in operation or establishing a banking company? We think that this language has a much wider import than mere commencement of business. To establish a company for any business means complete and permanent provision for carrying on that business, and putting a company in operation may well include its continued as well as its first or original operation. ”

“ We must construe the act, therefore, as covering with its penal prohibition the whole range of devices by which illegitimate currency is imposed on the community. It prohibits the use of such currency during the whole period of the establishment of an illegal company, and applied as completely to the last as to the first step of its operations. ”

“ No person, unless authorized, either directly or by just inference from the nature of the transaction, can fill up a blank bill for his own benefit, nor can such a bill be enforced against the drawer and indorser in favor of any one who takes it in bad faith ”