James Wilson, Pennsylvania’s representative to the Continental Congress, wrote an impassioned legal and political defense of the bank, emphasizing its role in international commerce.
He quoted Sir James Steuart, one of the world’s first economists, calling banking “that branch of credit which best deserves the  5  This account is derived from Edward S. Kaplan, The Bank of the United States and the American Economy (1999), at 3-10, and from Janet Wilson, “The Bank of North America and Pennsylvania Politics: 1781-1787,” 66(1) Penn.