on has presented an
incorporation as some great, _independent, substantive_ thing--as a
political end of peculiar magnitude and moment; whereas it is truly to
be considered as a quality, capacity, or mean to an end. Thus a
mercantile company is formed with a certain capital for the purpose of
carrying on a particular branch of business. The business to be
prosecuted is the _end_. The association in order to form the
requisite capital is the primary _mean_. Let an incorporation be
added, and you only add a new quality to that association which
enables it to prosecute the business with more safety and convenience.
The association when incorporated still remains the _mean_, and can
not become the _end_.

To this reasoning respecting the inherent right of government to
employ all the means requisite to the execution of its specified
powers, it is objected, that none but _necessary_ and _proper_ means
can be employed; and none can be _necessary_, but those without which
the grant of the power would be nugatory. So far has this restrictive
interpretation been pressed as to make the case of _necessity_ which
shall warrant the constitutional exercise of a power, to depend on
casual and temporary circumstances; an idea, which alone confutes the
construction. The expedience of exercising a particular power, at a
particular time, must indeed depend on circumstances, but the
constitutional right of exercising it must be uniform and invariable.
All the arguments, therefore, drawn from the accidental existence of
certain state banks which happen to exist to-day, and for aught that
concerns the government of the United States may disappear to-morrow,
must not only be rejected as fallacious, but must be viewed as
demonstrative that there is a radical source of error in the
reasoning.

But it is essential to the being of the government that so erroneous a
conception of the meaning of the word _necessary_ should be exploded.

It is certain that neither the grammatical nor popular sense of the
term requires that construction. According to both, _necessary_ often
means no more than _needful, requisite, incidental, useful_, or
_conducive to_. It is a common mode of expression to say that it is
necessary for a government or a person to do this or that thing, where
nothing more is intended or understood than that the interests of the
government or person require, or will be promoted by doing this or
that thing.

This is the true sense i