Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/454

 446 shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises. For what purpose? To pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; an arrangement and phraseology, which clearly show, that the latter part of the clause was intended to enumerate the purposes, to which the money thus raised might be appropriated. (3.) If this is not the real object and fair construction of the second part of this grant, it follows, either that it has no import or operation whatever, or one of much greater extent, than the first part. This presumption is evidently groundless in both instances; in the first, because no part of the constitution can be considered as useless; no sentence or clause in it without a meaning. In the second, because such a construction, as would make the second part of the clause an original grant, embracing the same objects with the first, but with much greater power than it, would be in the highest degree absurd. The order generally observed in grants, an order founded in common sense, since it promotes a clear understanding of their import, is to grant the power intended to be conveyed in the most full and explicit manner; and then to explain or qualify it, if explanation or qualification should be necessary. This order has, it is believed, been invariably observed in all the grants contained in the constitution. In the next place, because, if the clause in question is not construed merely as an authority to appropriate the public money, it must be obvious, that it conveys a power of indefinite and unlimited extent; that there would have been no use for the special powers to raise and support armies, and a navy; to regulate commerce; to call forth the militia; or even to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises. An unqualified power to pay the debts