At the New Reform Club, Seth Barrett Tillman: General George Washington and the Bank of England. From the introduction (footnotes omitted):
There is substantial evidence to support the inference that Washington, for one, did not view “private business pursuits . . . with foreign state-chartered trading companies” as emoluments. During the Revolutionary War, George Washington owned stock in, and received dividends from, the Bank of England. This foreign corporation received its charter by operation of an act of the English Parliament: the Tonnage Act of 1694. The Bank of England, which was analogous to the first Bank of the United States, served as the private banker for the British Exchequer. More importantly, the Bank of England was analogous to the foreign government “instrumentalit[ies]” that Plaintiffs [in the emoluments litigation] allege Trump-affiliated commercial entities are doing business with.
At the relevant times, the Articles of Confederation governed our young republic. That charter included a Foreign Emoluments Clause, which provided “[N]or shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States, or any of them [i.e., any State], accept of any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any King, Prince or foreign State . . . .” Furthermore, the Continental Congress had chosen Washington as the commander-in-chief of the nation’s armed forces. As an appointed military officer, he held an “office . . . under the United States,” and could not “accept of any . . . emolument” from a “foreign State.”
This is an excerpt from the amicus curiae Brief of Scholar Seth Barrett Tillman and Judicial Education Project Support of the Defendant’s Supplemental Brief in Blumenthal v. Trump (Civ. A. No. 1:17-cv-01154-EGS) (D.D.C.), available in full here.
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