Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/141

 CH. XXV.] exist. Thus, it was proposed in the convention, to give a general power "to grant charters of incorporation;"—to "grant charters of incorporation in cases, where the public good may require them, and the authority of a single state may be incompetent;" —and "to grant letters of incorporation for canals, &c." If either of these propositions had been adopted, there would have been an obvious propriety in giving the power in express terms; because, as to the two former, the power was general and unlimited, and reaching far beyond any of the other enumerated powers; and as to the latter, it might be far more extensive than any incident to the other enumerated powers. But the rejection of these propositions does not prove, that congress in no case, as an incident to the enumerated powers, should erect a corporation; but only, that they should not have a substantive, independent power to erect corporations beyond those powers.

§ 1260. Indeed, it is most manifest, that it never could have been contemplated by the convention, that congress should, in no case, possess the power to erect a corporation. What otherwise would become of the territorial governments, all of which are corporations created by congress? There is no where an express power given to congress to erect them. But under the confederation, congress did provide for their erection, as a resulting and implied right of sovereignty, by the celebrated ordinance of 1787; and congress, under the