n system. The
general welfare, by the very force of the words themselves, means the
common as distinguished from the private or individual welfare. The
system of national banks may or may not be a good and desirable system,
but it is difficult to understand the constitutional power of the
General government to establish it.

On the ground that its powers are general, not particular, the General
government has no power to lay a protective tariff. It can lay a
tariff for revenue, not for protection of home manufactures or home
industry; for the interests fostered, even though indirectly
advantageous to the whole people, are in their nature private or
particular, not general interests, and chiefly interests of private
corporations and capitalists. Their incidental or even consequential
effects do not change their direct and essential nature. So with
domestic slavery. Slavery comes under the head of private rights,
whether regarded on the side of the master or on the side of the slave.
The right of a citizen to hold a slave, if a right at all, is the
private right of property, and the right of the slave to his freedom is
a private and personal right, and neither is placed under the safeguard
of the General government, which has nowhere, unless in the District of
Columbia and the places over which it has exclusive legislative power
in all cases whatsoever, either the right to establish it or to abolish
it, except perhaps under the war power, as a military necessity, an
indemnity for the past, or a security for the future.

This applies to what are called Territories as well as to the States.
The right of the government to govern the Territories in regard to
private and particular rights and interests, is derived from no express
grant of power, and is held only ex necessitate--the United States
owning the domain, and there being no other authority competent to
govern them. But, as in the case of all powers held ex necessitate,
the power is restricted to the absolute necessity in the case. What
are called Territorial governments, to distinguish them from the State
governments, are only provisional governments, and can touch private
rights and interests no further than is necessary to preserve order and
prepare the way for the organization and installation of a regular
State government. Till then the law governing private rights is the
law that was in force, if any such there was, when the territory became
by purchas