but this high privilege is denied; whatever may be the motives and views
entertained by the representatives of the people to induce delay, their
assent is to be presumed, and is ever afterwards binding unless their
dissent shall be unconditionally expressed at their first session after
the passage of this bill into a law. They may by formal resolution
declare the question of assent or dissent to be undecided and postponed,
and yet, in opposition to their express declaration to the contrary,
their assent is to be implied. Cases innumerable might be cited to
manifest the irrationality of such an inference. Let one or two in
addition suffice. The popular branch of the legislature may express its
dissent by an unanimous vote, and its resolution may be defeated by
a tie vote of the senate, and yet the assent is to be implied. Both
branches of the legislature may concur in a resolution of decided
dissent, and yet the governor may exert the _veto_ power conferred on
him by the State constitution, and their legislative action be defeated,
and yet the assent of the legislative authority is implied, and the
directors of this contemplated institution are authorized to establish a
branch or branches in such State whenever they may find it conducive to
the interest of the stockholders to do so; and having once established
it they can under no circumstances withdraw it except by act of
Congress. The State may afterwards protest against such unjust
inference, but its authority is gone. Its assent is implied by its
failure or inability to act at its first session, and its voice can
never afterwards be heard. To inferences so violent and, as they seem to
me, irrational I can not yield my consent. No court of justice would
or could sanction them without reversing all that is established in
judicial proceeding by introducing presumptions at variance with fact
and inferences at the expense of reason. A State in a condition of
duress would be _presumed_ to speak as an individual manacled and in
prison might be presumed to be in the enjoyment of freedom. Far better