CH. XIV.]
POWERS OF CONGRESS—TAXES.
449
cises—those only, on which it could operate; the rule, by which the fourth, that is, taxes, should be laid, being already provided for in another part of the constitution. The object of this provision is, to secure a just equality among the states in the exercise of that power by congress. By placing it after both the grants, that is, after that to raise, and that to appropriate the public money, and making it apply to the first only, it shows, that it was not intended, that the power granted in the second should be paramount to, and destroy that granted in the first. It shows, also, that no such formidable power, as that suggested, had been granted in the second, or any power, against the abuse of which it was thought necessary specially to provide. Surely, if it was deemed proper to guard a specific power, of limited extent and well known import, against injustice and abuse, it would have been much more so, to have guarded against the abuse of a power of such vast extent, and so indefinite, as would have been granted, by the second part of the clause, if considered as a distinct and original grant.
With this construction all the other enumerated grants, and indeed all the grants of power contained in the constitution, have their full operation and effect. They all stand well together, fulfilling the great purposes intended by them. Under it we behold a great scheme consistent in all its parts, a government instituted for national purposes, vested with adequate powers for those purposes, commencing with the most important of all, that of revenue, and proceeding, in regular order, to the others, with which it was deemed proper to endow it; all too drawn with the utmost circumspection and care. How much more consistent is this construction with the great objects of the institu-
vol. ii.57
