Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/381

 CH. XIV.] powers, &c.?" Surely, this clause is as applicable to the power to lay taxes, as to any other; and no one would dream of its being a mere specification, under the power to provide for the common defence, and general welfare.

§ 911. It has been said in support of this construction, that in the articles of confederation (art. 8) it is provided, that "all charges of war, and all other expenses, that shall be incurred for the common defence, or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, &c.;" and that the similarity in the use of these same phrases in these two great federal charters may well be considered, as rendering their meaning less liable to misconstruction; because it will scarcely be said, that in the former they were ever understood to be either a general grant or power, or to authorize the requisition or application of money by the old congress to the common defence and [or] general welfare, except in the cases afterwards enumerated, which explained and limited their meaning; and if such was the limited meaning attached to these phrases in the very instrument revised and remodeled by the present constitution, it can never be supposed, that when copied into this constitution, a different meaning ought to be attached to them. Without stopping to consider, whether the constitution can in any just and critical sense be deemed a revision and remodeling of the confederation, if the argument here stated be of any value, it plainly