both agree that the power must be unlimited in its extent, though they do not appear to contemplate it as embracing particulars in addition to, and differing in nature and character from, those specifically mentioned and assigned, out of the general powers of the government, to the legislative department. Hamilton says, "The authorities essential to the care of the common defence are these: To raise armies; build and equip fleets; prescribe rules for the government of both; to direct their operations; to provide for their support." Madison says, "They are those of declaring war, and granting letters of marque; of providing armies and fleets ; of regulating and calling forth the militia; of levying and borrowing money." These are all specified powers of different departments, either the legislative or executive, to whom they are distributed by the Constitution; but they fall far short of embracing the whole curriculum necessary to enable the government to accomplish their great and comprehensive duty, as here prescribed, "to provide for the common defence."

§ 96. They may be sufficient to enable them to carry on war when it actually comes, as it may, with or without being declared. But how do they get the providential power to do many other and more important things, by way of preparation, to render these effectual? To build, stock, furnish, man, and maintain fortresses,

magazines, armories, arsenals, dock-yards, shipyards, founderies, manufactories, and machinery for the fabrication of all kinds of warlike implements; military roads, ships of war, and shipcanals; working mines, growing ship-timber, and raising hemp? All this and much more when there is no war, nor prospect of any? To encourage sailors by bounties, and give education, in all the sciences and mysteries of war, to young men fitting for the military or naval service of the country? All these powers, to a greater or less extent, the government have been using ever since it was established; and must continue to use, or give up their chief duty of providing for the common defence. And yet they are none of them specified in any list of the particular duties of any department.

$97. They are included in the general duty and power of the government "to provide for the common defence;" and, so far as they are legislative, they devolve directly on Congress, as the depository of all the legislative power of the government, and also by the special authority to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution all the powers vested in the government of the United States.1

1 In Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. R., Chief Justice Marshall, speaks ing for the Court, says, "The powers given, as fairly understood, render it [the government] competent . . . to the objects for which it is declared to be instituted." This refers directly to the objects mentioned in the enacting clause, and pronounces the powers of the government adequate to the accomplishment of them all.

When the people say they ordain this government on purpose "to provide for the common defence," to assert that they confer no power for the purpose is an attempt not only to cancel this part of the Constitution, but absolutely to stultify the nation. That a Constitution

instituting a national government could have been made expressly for six great national and specific purposes, and yet include or imply no duty or authority to effect either of them, is too absurd for belief without proof, and too contradictory to be supported by proof. "That would be," in the language of Judge Story, "to create a power for a certain end, and then deny the end intended by the power."

CHAPTER IX.

THE GENERAL WELFARE.

$98. THE fifth avowed purpose of the Constitution was to "promote the general welfare." In the history of the government, it has not been usual to encounter objections to the Constitution, on the ground that it was not sufficiently liberal in its grant of powers to the government. Of course its friends have not felt themselves called upon to propound an elucidation and exposition of those parts of it which were most likely to call forth objections of the opposite character, already sufficiently abundant, and, on account of their ad captandum quality, rather than their substantial weight, superabundantly troublesome. Such parts have been much more liable to be passed over and forgotten. Not a few stanch friends of the Constitution have, at different times, thought it expedient to repudiate and abjure their true and obvious meaning, force, and validity; while more have been willing to overlook and ignore them; and all have actually united with its adversaries in

abstaining from the legitimate use and salutary execution of them; till, in some instances, it has even been made a question, whether the right to exercise such powers has not been totally lost by non user; or, in other words, whether the people have not lost, through the continued infidelity of their agents, the government, the right to have their' Constitution executed at all. This question we shall not stop to discuss. "Litera scripta manet."

This

§ 99. In regard to the words now under consideration, the efforts of the opposition have never been, as with other parts of the Constitution, to tone down or fritter away their meaning; but to construe them out of the Constitution, and get rid of them entirely. they have rightly considered the only way of avoiding the full drift of general authority and governmental supremacy included in them. Mr. George Mason, however, one of the most decided opponents of the Constitution, held that this was a substantive power, and "that Congress should have power to provide for the general welfare of the Union." Patrick Henry seems to have been of the same opinion.1 Richard Henry Lee said these terms seemed to him "to submit to Congress every object of human legislation." And Mr. Monroe says, "An unqualified power to pay the debts, and provide

1 3 Elliot's Debates, 442, 590.

2 Letter to Samuel Adams, Oct. 5, 1787.