Bankruptcy.
Mr. VAN BUREN. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution, they [bankruptcy and insolvent laws] were known and distinguished, both in England and in this country, as distinct systems—the one having for its object to afford a summary and speedy remedy for creditors against fraudulent or failing traders; the other affording relief to insolvent debtors of all denominations. The Constitution of the United States, he said, had clothed the national legislature with power to establish the former, and had left the right to pass, and the duty of establishing, the latter, upon the state governments. The 93d section of this bill, he said, was, upon any definition that might be given of the different terms, an insolvent law. If it passed,—that is, if Congress had the constitutional power to pass it,—the states had no right to pass any law upon the subject of insolvency; not even to authorize the discharge of debtors imprisoned upon a process issuing out of their own courts, otherwise than as it might suit the pleasure or convenience of Congress to permit. There was, he said, no middle ground. If the partition wall between bankruptcy and insolvency was once broken down, all state legislation was subjected to the absolute and arbitrary supervision of Congress. He did not believe that such was the design of the framers of the Constitution. He did not believe that such was the Constitution. He therefore objected to the constitutional power of Congress to pass the section referred to. He had before said that he rose to explain, not to discuss, and he would not depart from the course he had marked out for himself. He would therefore only add, that, in his judgment, the provision contained in the 93d section was not within the reasons which induced the framers of the Constitution to vest this power of establishing uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies in Congress; that it was a power which never ought to be, or to have been, vested in Congress; that it could only be well and successfully executed by the states, where those who made the Constitution had left it; that its exercise would operate most injuriously upon the system which governed the Union and the states separately: those mischiefs would, among other things, consist in an injurious extension of the patronage of the federal government, and an insupportable enlargement of the range of its judicial power.