Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/390

 382 the doctrine of a restrictive power will contend, that the power to lay taxes to pay debts, authorizes the payment of all debts, which the United States may choose to incur, whether for national or constitutional objects, or not. The words, "to pay debts," are therefore, either antecedent debts, or debts to be incurred "for the common defence and general welfare," which will justify congress in incurring any debts for such purposes. But the language is not confined to the payment of debts for the common defence and general welfare. It is not "to pay the debts" merely; but "to provide for the common defence and general welfare." That is, congress may lay taxes to provide means for the common defence and general welfare. So that there is a difficulty in rejecting one part of the qualifying clause, without rejecting the whole, or enlarging the words for some purposes, and restricting them for others.

§ 919. A power to lay taxes for any purposes whatsoever is a general power; a power to lay taxes for certain specified purposes is a limited power. A power to lay taxes for the common defence and general welfare of the United States is not in common sense a general power. It is limited to those objects. It cannot constitutionally transcend them. If the defence proposed by a tax be not the common defence of the United States, if the welfare be not general, but special, or local, as contradistinguished from national, it is not within the scope of the constitution. If the tax be not proposed for the common defence, or general welfare, but for other objects, wholly extraneous, (as for instance, for propagating Mahometanism among the Turks, or giving aids and subsidies to a foreign nation, to build palaces for its kings, or erect monuments to its