be exercised for ends which make it a principal
or substantive power, independent of the principal power to which it is
an incident." It is not enough that it may be regarded by Congress as
_convenient_ or that its exercise would advance the public weal. It must
be _necessary and proper_ to the execution of the principal expressed
power to which it is an incident, and without which such principal power
can not be carried into effect. The whole frame of the Federal
Constitution proves that the Government which it creates was intended
to be one of limited and specified powers. A construction of the
Constitution so broad as that by which the power in question is defended
tends imperceptibly to a consolidation of power in a Government intended
by its framers to be thus limited in its authority. "The obvious
tendency and inevitable result of a consolidation of the States into one
sovereignty would be to transform the republican system of the United
States into a monarchy." To guard against the assumption of all powers
which encroach upon the reserved sovereignty of the States, and which
consequently tend to consolidation, is the duty of all the true friends
of our political system. That the power in question is not properly an
incident to any of the granted powers I am fully satisfied; but if there
were doubts on this subject, experience has demonstrated the wisdom of
the rule that all the functionaries of the Federal Government should
abstain from the exercise of all questionable or doubtful powers. If an
enlargement of the powers of the Federal Government should be deemed
proper, it is safer and wiser to appeal to the States and the people
in the mode prescribed by the Constitution for the grant desired than
to assume its exercise without an amendment of the Constitution.
If Congress does not possess the general power to construct works of
internal improvement within the States, or to appropriate money from the
Treasury for that purpose, what is there to exempt some, at least, of
the objects of appropriation included in this bill from the operation of
the general rule? This bill assumes the existence of the power, and in
some of its provisions asserts the principle that Congress may exercise
it as fully as though the appropriations which it proposes were
applicable to the construction of roads and canals. If there be a
distinction in principle, it is not perceived, and should be clearly
defined. Some of the objects of appro