e an unlimited power to raise
money, and that in its appropriation they have a discretionary power,
restricted only by the duty to appropriate it to purposes of common
defense and of general, not local, national, not State, benefit.

I will now proceed to the fifth source from which the power is said to
be derived, viz, the power to make all laws which shall be necessary
and proper for carrying into execution all the powers vested by the
Constitution in the Government of the United States or in any department
or officer thereof. This is the seventeenth and last of the enumerated
powers granted to Congress.

I have always considered this power as having been granted on a
principle of greater caution to secure the complete execution of all
the powers which had been vested in the General Government. It contains
no distinct and specific power, as every other grant does, such as to
lay and collect taxes, to declare war, to regulate commerce, and the
like. Looking to the whole scheme of the General Government, it gives
to Congress authority to make all laws which should be deemed necessary
and proper for carrying all its powers into effect. My impression has
been invariably that this power would have existed substantially if this
grant had not been made; for why is any power granted unless it be to be
executed when required, and how can it be executed under our Government
unless it be by laws necessary and proper for the purpose--that is, well
adapted to the end? It is a principle universally admitted that a grant
of a power conveys as a necessary consequence or incident to it the
means of carrying it into effect by a fair construction of its import.
In the formation, however, of the Constitution, which was to act
directly upon the people and be paramount to the extent of its powers
to the constitutions of the States, it was wise in its framers to leave
nothing to implication which might be reduced to certainty. It is known
that all power which rests solely on that ground has been systematically
and zealously opposed under all governments with which we have any
acquaintance; and it was reasonable to presume that under our system,
where there was a division of the sovereignty between the two
independent governments, the measures of the General Government would
excite equal jealousy and produce an opposition not less systematic,
though, perhaps, less violent. Hence the policy by the framers of our
Government of securing by a f