What is a power, but the ability or faculty of doing a thing?
What is the ability to do a thing, but the power of employing the
MEANS necessary to its execution? What is a LEGISLATIVE power, but
a power of making LAWS? What are the MEANS to execute a LEGISLATIVE
power but LAWS? What is the power of laying and collecting taxes,
but a LEGISLATIVE POWER, or a power of MAKING LAWS, to lay and
collect taxes? What are the propermeans of executing such a power,
but NECESSARY and PROPER laws?
This simple train of inquiry furnishes us at once with a test by
which to judge of the true nature of the clause complained of. It
conducts us to this palpable truth, that a power to lay and collect
taxes must be a power to pass all laws NECESSARY and PROPER for the
execution of that power; and what does the unfortunate and
culumniated provision in question do more than declare the same
truth, to wit, that the national legislature, to whom the power of
laying and collecting taxes had been previously given, might, in the
execution of that power, pass all laws NECESSARY and PROPER to carry
it into effect? I have applied these observations thus particularly
to the power of taxation, because it is the immediate subject under
consideration, and because it is the most important of the
authorities proposed to be conferred upon the Union.
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