he order generally observed in grants, an order
founded in common sense, since it promotes a clear understanding of
their import, is to grant the power intended to be conveyed in the
most full and explicit manner, and then to explain or qualify it, if
explanation or qualification should be necessary. This order has, it
is believed, been invariably observed in all the grants contained in
the Constitution. In the second because if the clause in question is
not construed merely as an authority to appropriate the public money,
it must be obvious that it conveys a power of indefinite and unlimited
extent; that there would have been no use for the special powers to
raise and support armies and a navy, to regulate commerce, to call forth
the militia, or even to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and
excises. An unqualified power to pay the debts and provide for the
common defense and general welfare, as the second part of this clause
would be if considered as a distinct and separate grant, would extend to
every object in which the public could be interested. A power to provide
for the common defense would give to Congress the command of the whole
force and of all the resources of the Union; but a right to provide for
the general welfare would go much further. It would, in effect, break
down all the barriers between the States and the General Government and
consolidate the whole under the latter.

The powers specifically granted to Congress are what are called the
enumerated powers, and are numbered in the order in which they stand,
among which that contained in the first clause holds the first place
in point of importance. If the power created by the latter part of the
clause is considered an original grant, unconnected with and independent
of the first, as in that case it must be, then the first part is
entirely done away, as are all the other grants in the Constitution,
being completely absorbed in the transcendent power granted in the
latter part; but if the clause be construed in the sense contended for,
then every part has an important meaning and effect; not a line, a word,
in it is superfluous. A power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts,
and excises subjects to the call of Congress every branch of the public
revenue, internal and external, and the addition to pay the debts and
provide for the common defense and general welfare gives the right of
applying the money raised--that is, of appropriating it to the p