Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/408

 400 ; twenty by that of Virginia; thirty-three by that of New-York; twenty-six by that of North-Carolina; and twenty-one by that of Rhode-Island.

"Here are a majority of the states, proposing amendments, in one instance thirty-three by a single state; all of them intended to circumscribe the power granted to the general government, by explanations, restrictions, or prohibitions, without including a single proposition from a single state referring to the terms, 'common defence and general welfare;' which, if understood to convey the asserted power, could not have failed to be the power most strenuously aimed at, because evidently more alarming in its range, than all the powers objected to, put together. And that the terms should have passed altogether unnoticed by the many eyes, which saw danger in terms and phrases employed in some of the most minute and limited of the enumerated powers, must be regarded as a demonstration, that it was taken for granted, that the terms were harmless, because explained and limited, as in the 'articles of confederation,' by the enumerated powers, which followed them.

"A like demonstration, that these terms were not understood in any sense, that could invest congress with powers not otherwise bestowed by the constitutional charter, may be found in what passed in the first session of congress, when the subject of amendments was taken up, with the conciliatory view of freeing the constitution from objections, which had been made to the extent of its powers, or to the unguarded terms employed in describing them. Not only were the terms, 'common defence and general welfare,' unnoticed in the long list of amendments brought forward in the outset; but the Journals of Congress show, that in the progress of the discussions, not a single proposition was made in either branch of the legislature, which referred to the phrase, as admitting a constructive enlargement of the granted powers, and requiring an amendment guarding against it. Such a forbearance and silence on such an occasion, and among so many members, who belonged to the part of the nation, which called for explanatory and restrictive amendments, and who had been elected, as known advocates for them, cannot be accounted for, without supposing, that the terms, 'common defence and general welfare,' were not, at that time, deemed susceptible of any such construction, as has since been applied to them.

"It may be thought, perhaps, due to the subject, to advert to a letter of October 5th, 1787, to Samuel Adams, and another of October 16th, of from the imbecilities, as well as the inequalities of the confederation. Without such a power, it would not be possible to provide for the support of the national