exclusive right and power of establishing and regulating
post-offices from one State to another throughout all the United States,
and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as
may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office." The term
"establish" was likewise the ruling one in that instrument, and was
evidently intended and understood to give a power simply and solely to
fix where there should be post-offices. By transferring this term from
the Confederation into the Constitution it was doubtless intended that
it should be understood in the same sense in the latter that it was
in the former instrument, and to be applied alike to post-offices and
post-roads. In whatever sense it is applied to post-offices it must
be applied in the same sense to post-roads. But it may be asked, If
such was the intention, why were not all the other terms of the grant
transferred with it? The reason is obvious. The Confederation being a
bond of union between independent States, it was necessary in granting
the powers which were to be exercised over them to be very explicit
and minute in defining the powers granted. But the Constitution to the
extent of its powers having incorporated the States into one Government
like the government of the States individually, fewer words in defining
the powers granted by it were not only adequate, but perhaps better
adapted to the purpose. We find that brevity is a characteristic of the
instrument. Had it been intended to convey a more enlarged power in the
Constitution than had been granted in the Confederation, surely the same
controlling term would not have been used, or other words would have
been added, to show such intention and to mark the extent to which the
power should be carried. It is a liberal construction of the powers
granted in the Constitution by this term to include in it all the powers
that were granted in the Confederation by terms which specifically
defined and, as was supposed, extended their limits. It would be absurd
to say that by omitting from the Constitution any portion of the
phraseology which was deemed important in the Confederation the import
of that term was enlarged, and with it the powers of the Constitution,
in a proportional degree, beyond what they were in the Confederation.
The right to exact postage and to protect the post-offices and mails
from robbery by punishing the offenders may fairly be considered as
incidents to the grant, since