shall be bound thereby, anything in the
constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Such
a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding
the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in
guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and
the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general
welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are unsusceptible of
judicial cognizance and decision.

A restriction of the power "to provide for the common defense and
general welfare" to cases which are to be provided for by the
expenditure of money would still leave within the legislative power of
Congress all the great and most important measures of Government, money
being the ordinary and necessary means of carrying them into execution.

If a general power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the
navigation of water courses, with the train of powers incident thereto,
be not possessed by Congress, the assent of the States in the mode
provided in the bill can not confer the power. The only cases in which
the consent and cession of particular States can extend the power of
Congress are those specified and provided for in the Constitution.

I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the
improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National
Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage
to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly
given by the Constitution, and believing that it can not be deduced from
any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction and a
reliance on insufficient precedents; believing also that the permanent
success of the Constitution depends on a definite partition of powers
between the General and the State Governments, and that no adequate
landmarks would be left by the constructive extension of the powers of
Congress as proposed in the bill, I have no option but to withhold
my signature from it, and to cherishing the hope that its beneficial
objects may be attained by a resort for the necessary powers to the same
wisdom and virtue in the nation which established the Constitution in
its actual form and providently marked out in the instrument itself a
safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest.

JAMES MADISON.

PROCLAMATION.

[From Annals of Congress