They then took a comprehensive view of those powers, and contended that a bank was a known and usual instrument by which several of them were exercised.
After a debate of great length, which was supported on both sides with ability, and with that ardour which was naturally excited by the importance attached by each party to the principle in contest, the question was put, and the bill was carried in the affirmative by a majority of nineteen voices.
[Sidenote: The opinions of the cabinet on the constitutionality of this last law.] The point which had been agitated with so much zeal in the house of representatives, was examined with equal deliberation by the executive.

The cabinet was divided upon it.

The secretary of state, and the attorney general, conceived that congress had clearly transcended their constitutional powers; while the secretary of the treasury, with equal clearness, maintained the opposite opinion.

The advice of each minister, with his reasoning in support of it, was required in writing, and their arguments were considered by the President with all that attention which the magnitude of the question, and the interest taken in it by the opposing parties, so eminently required.

This deliberate investigation of the subject terminated in a conviction, that the constitution of the United States authorized the measure;[52] and the sanction of the executive was given to the act.
[Footnote 52: See note, No.