Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/449

 CH. XIV.] not within the scope of the enumerated powers, is maintained, has been already, in a great measure, stated in the preceding examination of the grammatical construction of the clause, giving the power to lay taxes. The controversy is virtually at an end, if it is once admitted, that the words, "to provide for the common defence and general welfare," are a part and qualification of the power to lay taxes; for then, congress has certainly a right to appropriate money to any purposes, or in any manner, conducive to those ends. The whole stress of the argument is, therefore, to establish, that the words, "to provide for the common defence and general welfare," do not form an independent power, nor any qualification of the power to lay taxes. And the argument is, that they are "mere general terms, explained and limited by the subjoined specifications." It is attempted to be fortified (as has been already seen) by a recurrence to the history of the confederation; to the successive reports and alterations of the tax clause in the convention; to the inconveniencies of such a large construction; and to the supposed impossibility, that a power to make such appropriations for the common defence and general welfare, should not have been, at the adoption of the constitution, a subject of great alarm, and jealousy; and as such, resisted in and out of the state conventions.

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