e ordinary modes.

Did not experience evince the contrary, it would be natural to conclude
that the propriety of a general power of taxation in the national
government might safely be permitted to rest on the evidence of these
propositions, unassisted by any additional arguments or illustrations.
But we find, in fact, that the antagonists of the proposed Constitution,
so far from acquiescing in their justness or truth, seem to make their
principal and most zealous effort against this part of the plan. It
may therefore be satisfactory to analyze the arguments with which they
combat it.

Those of them which have been most labored with that view, seem in
substance to amount to this: "It is not true, because the exigencies of
the Union may not be susceptible of limitation, that its power of laying
taxes ought to be unconfined. Revenue is as requisite to the purposes of
the local administrations as to those of the Union; and the former are
at least of equal importance with the latter to the happiness of the
people. It is, therefore, as necessary that the State governments should
be able to command the means of supplying their wants, as that the
national government should possess the like faculty in respect to the
wants of the Union. But an indefinite power of taxation in the LATTER
might, and probably would in time, deprive the FORMER of the means of
providing for their own necessities; and would subject them entirely to
the mercy of the national legislature. As the laws of the Union are to
become the supreme law of the land, as it is to have power to pass all
laws that may be NECESSARY for carrying into execution the authorities
with which it is proposed to vest it, the national government might at
any time abolish the taxes imposed for State objects upon the pretense
of an interference with its own. It might allege a necessity of doing
this in order to give efficacy to the national revenues. And thus
all the resources of taxation might by degrees become the subjects of
federal monopoly, to the entire exclusion and destruction of the State
governments."

This mode of reasoning appears sometimes to turn upon the supposition
of usurpation in the national government; at other times it seems to be
designed only as a deduction from the constitutional operation of its
intended powers. It is only in the latter light that it can be
admitted to have any pretensions to fairness. The moment we launch into
conjectures about the usur