Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/451

 CH. XIV.] of the text, and the practice of the government to sustain it against an artificial doctrine, set up on the other side.

§ 975. The argument derived from the words and intent has been so fully considered already, that it cannot need repetition. It is summed up with great force in the report of the secretary of the treasury on manufactures, in 1791. "The national legislature," says he, has express authority to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare, with no other qualifications, than that all dudes, imposts, and excises, shall be uniform throughout the United States; that no capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to numbers ascertained by a census, or enumeration taken on the principle prescribed in the constitution; and that no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state. These three qualifications excepted, the power to raise money is plenary and indefinite. And the objects, to which it may be appropriated, are no less comprehensive, than the payment of the public debts, and the providing for the common defence and general welfare. The terms "general welfare" were doubtless intended to signify more, than was expressed or imported in those, which preceded; otherwise numerous exigencies, incident to the affairs of the nation, would have been left without a provision. The phrase is as comprehensive, as any, that could have been used; because it was not fit, that the constitutional authority of the Union to appropriate its revenues should have been restricted within narrower limits, than the general