Mr. HOWARD. This section applies to bodies corporate and does not apply to natural persons, whether individuals or associations of partners. By its very terms it is applicable to corporations; and it makes no distinction between the various kindsofcorporations, whether they be trading commercial corporations or corporations for any other purpose. Originally, it was beyond a doubt the purpose of a bankrupt act to discharge the person of the debtor from arrest, or as the case might be to discharge him from the liability under which he labored. I may be mistaken, but I am of the imPression that the English bankrupt laws do not apply to corporations. such laws have always been regarded as laws for the relief of honest, unfortunate debtors, and for the benefit of creditors, and they apply, I think, exclusively to natural persons, not to corporations. A corporation exists only by exPress, law. Corporations in the States draw their being from the statutes of the States, which statutes are called their charters. Their existence, all their attributes, all their liabilities, all penalties o: upon them, the very life and being, the verysoul and essence of a corporation is derived from the State statutes. The States have full and complete control over corporations erected or ereated by their laws; and I have yet to learn that it is within the constitutional competency of Congress to interfere in any way whatever with the functions or operations of State corporations. If I am wrong about this I should like very much to be set right by the learned chairman of the ComJudiciary, who I have no doubt is fully prepared [Mr. TRUMBULL. The Senator, from Vermont has charge of the bill] to explain this subject, which is some what.to me. I do not understand how such a clause could have got into a federal bankrupt bill. The mode of winding u a State corporation, the mode in which it shall exercise its functions, the mode in which it shall die and be buried, are all Prescribed by the charter or by the laws of the State applicable to these corporations; and until now it has, I believe, been unheard of that Congress has attempted to step in andothe mode by which a State corporation shall cease to exist or be wound up. Still I find in this bill this strange clause, and to me it is a very strange clause, that whenever any corporation by proceedings under this act shall be declared bankrupt such decreeof bankruptcy shall work a forfeiture of all the franchises of such corporation. To me this is a very strange principle. I do not believe we have power to do this. I do not believe that under the bankrupt clause of the Constitution Congress is authorized to step in and declare what shall be or what shall not because of forfeiture of a State charter. It is not, perhaps, even generally true of trading corporations erected by the States that insolvency is absolutely a cause of forfeiture. It may be a cause of forfeiture or it may not be, according as the State legislation has established; but can Congress declare a cause of a forfeiture of chartered rights which are not declared to be such by the State legislation? If we can, I beg some gentleman to point out to me in the Constitution whence this anom alous power is derived. I do not see it in the Constitution as yet. Again, sir, as I have already remarked, there is in this clause no discrimination between the various kinds of corporations. It does not declare that commercial or trading corporations only shall be subject to the act and lose their charters in case of insolvency, but it brings within its broad sweep every corporation that is capable of contracting a debt and standing in the relation of debtor. Sir, you may commence with the humble corporations known ordinarily as lyceums, for there are a great many in the country, and library associations, all of which ordinarily are authorized to contract debts. This bill includes them and throws them and their little property into the im mense maelstrom of the bankrupt assets. It includes every town library association that exists by charter. It includes every mechanics' association that possesses the faculty of contracting a debt. It includes every bank erected throughout the U.S. under a State charter. It includes every railroad corpora.tion. It includes every association possessed of corporate rights and existing under a State charter, and declares that in case such corpo ration shall be declared bankrupt in a Federal court under the proceedings here detailed in this bill, proceedings entirely alien and foreign to the proceedings Presented by the State laws, it declares that whenever anyone of those corporations shall become bankrupt it shall forfeit its charter, and, as a matter of course, cease to exist. The committee had to take but one more step, and they might have taken that step, in my judgment, with precisely the same propriety that they took this step, and have gone so far as to declare that every State of the Union that is insolvent may be brought into a bankrupt court and have its State rights and State sovereignty forfeited by a bankrupt decree! Now, Mr. President, I do not believe the authors of the Constitution ever contemplated any such thing as this; but that when in the Constitution they gave to Congress the ". to pass uniform laws on the subject of bank: ruptcy they meant the bankruptcy of natural persons, for they knew as well as we do that a State corporation can exist only by virtue of its State charter; that it can act only upon the principles recognized in the State charter; that its whole existence, operation, life, and death are regulated and Prescribed by the legislation of the State. It would be rather an interesting spectacle certainly for the creditors of the innumerable corporations existing in the States to come before the bankrupt court, file a petition, and actually drive these corpo rations into insolvency and into a forfeiture of their charter. All the property of these innumerable corporations is thus exposed to be placed in the hands of an assignee in bankruptcy, and to be administered as ordinary bankrupt assets, and the very existence of these corporations, valuable as they are to the State, is placed at the mercy of the Federal power, and this bill yields the principle and it is a great fault of the bill that Congress may declare what may be the cause of forfeiture, and that that cause of forfeiture may be something different from the cause or causes of forfeiture embraced in the State charter or in the State laws. Sir, let us be a little cautious how we tread upon this forbidden ground. Let us abstain, so far as reason requires, from trenching upon what hitherto has been acknowledged as the exclusive jurisdictional limits of the State governments. I move, sir, to strike out this whole section.