r more of those above mentioned. I will
examine the ground of the claim in each instance.

The first of these grants is in the following words: "Congress shall
have power to establish post-offices and post-roads." What is the just
import of these words and the extent of the grant? The word "establish"
is the ruling term; "post-offices and post-roads" are the subjects on
which it acts. The question therefore is, What power is granted by that
word? The sense in which words are commonly used is that in which they
are to be understood in all transactions between public bodies and
individuals. The intention of the parties is to prevail, and there is
no better way of ascertaining it than by giving to the terms used their
ordinary import. If we were to ask any number of our most enlightened
citizens, who had no connection with public affairs and whose minds were
unprejudiced, what was the import of the word "establish" and the extent
of the grant which it controls, we do not think there would be any
difference of opinion among them. We are satisfied that all of them
would answer that a power was thereby given to Congress to fix on the
towns, court-houses, and other places throughout our Union at which
there should be post-offices, the routes by which the mails should be
carried from one post-office to another, so as to diffuse intelligence
as extensively and to make the institution as useful as possible, to
fix the postage to be paid on every letter and packet thus carried, to
support the establishment, and to protect the post-office and mails from
robbery by punishing those who should commit the offense. The idea of a
right to lay off the roads of the United States on a general scale of
improvement, to take the soil from the proprietor by force, to establish
turnpikes and tolls, and to punish offenders in the manner stated above
would never occur to any such person. The use of the existing road by
the stage, mail carrier, or postboy in passing over it as others do is
all that would be thought of, the jurisdiction and soil remaining to the
State, with a right in the State or those authorized by its legislature
to change the road at pleasure.

The intention of the parties is supported by other proof, which ought
to place it beyond all doubt. In the former act of Government, the
Confederation, we find a grant for the same purpose expressed in the
following words: "The United States in Congress assembled shall have
the sole and