the duplication of
the sums by the recipient State, and upon observance of stipulated
restrictions as to its use--have become commonplace.[281]

Triumph of the Hamiltonian Theory

The scope of the national spending power was brought before the Supreme
Court at least five times prior to 1936, but the Court disposed of four
of them without construing the "general welfare" clause. In the Pacific
Railway Cases[282] and Smith _v._ Kansas City Title and Trust
Company,[283] it affirmed the power of Congress to construct internal
improvements, and to charter and purchase the capital stock of federal
land banks, by reference to the powers of the National Government over
commerce, the post roads and fiscal operations, and to its war powers.
Decisions on the merits were withheld in two other cases--Massachusetts
_v._ Mellon and Frothingham _v._ Mellon[284]--on the ground that neither
a State nor an individual citizen is entitled to a remedy in the courts
against an unconstitutional appropriation of national funds. In United
States _v._ Gettysburg Electric Railway Co.,[285] however, the Court had
invoked "the great power of taxation to be exercised for the common
defence and the general welfare,"[286] to sustain the right of the
Federal Government to acquire land within a State for use as a national
park. Finally, in United States _v._ Butler,[287] the Court gave its
unqualified endorsement to Hamilton's views on the taxing power. Wrote
Justice Roberts for the Court: "Since the foundation of the Nation sharp
differences of opinion have persisted as to the true interpretation of
the phrase. Madison asserted it amounted to no more than a reference to
the other powers enumerated in the subsequent clauses of the same
section; that, as the United States is a government of limited and
enumerated powers, the grant of power to tax and spend for the general
national welfare must be confined to the enumerated legislative fields
committed to the Congress. In this view the phrase is mere tautology,
for taxation and appropriation are or may be necessary incidents of the
exercise of any of the enumerated legislative powers. Hamilton, on the
other hand, maintained the clause confers a power separate and distinct
from those later enumerated, is not restricted in meaning by the grant
of them, and Congress consequently has a substantive power to tax and to
appropriate, limited only by the requirement that it shall be exercised
to provide for the