It would be easy to
show, if it were necessary, that no important power, delegated by the
articles of Confederation, has been or can be executed by Congress,
without recurring more or less to the doctrine of CONSTRUCTION or
IMPLICATION. As the powers delegated under the new system are more
extensive, the government which is to administer it would find itself
still more distressed with the alternative of betraying the public
interests by doing nothing, or of violating the Constitution by
exercising powers indispensably necessary and proper, but, at the same
time, not EXPRESSLY granted.
Had the convention attempted a positive enumeration of the powers
necessary and proper for carrying their other powers into effect, the
attempt would have involved a complete digest of laws on every subject
to which the Constitution relates; accommodated too, not only to the
existing state of things, but to all the possible changes which futurity
may produce; for in every new application of a general power, the
PARTICULAR POWERS, which are the means of attaining the OBJECT of the
general power, must always necessarily vary with that object, and be
often properly varied whilst the object remains the same.
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