Page:Federalist, Dawson edition, 1863.djvu/457

 have copied the second Article of the existing Confederation, which would have prohibited the exercise of any power not expressly delegated; they might have attempted a positive enumeration of the powers comprehended under the general terms "necessary and proper;" they might have attempted a negative enumeration of them, by specifying the powers excepted from the general definition; they might have been altogether silent on the subject, leaving these necessary and proper powers to construction and inference.

Had the Convention taken the first method of adopting the second Article of Confederation, it is evident that the new Congress would be continually exposed, as their predecessors have been, to the alternative of construing the term "expressly" with so much rigor, as to disarm the Government of all real authority whatever, or with so much latitude as to destroy altogether the force of the restriction. It would be easy to show, if it were necessary, that no important power, delegated by the Articles of Confederation, has been or can be executed by Congress, without recurring more or less to the doctrine of construction or implication. As the powers delegated under the new system are more extensive, the Government which is to administer it would find itself still more distressed with the alternative of betraying the public interest by doing nothing, or of violating the Constitution by exercising powers indispensably necessary and proper, but, at the same time, not expressly granted.

Had the Convention attempted a positive enumeration of the powers necessary and proper for carrying their other powers into effect, the attempt would have involved a complete digest of laws on every subject to which the Constitution relates; accommodated too, not only to the existing state of things, but to all the possible changes which futurity may produce; for in every