n which the word is used in the constitution.
The whole turn of the clause containing it indicates an intent to give
by it a liberal latitude to the exercise of the specified powers. The
expressions have peculiar comprehensiveness. They are "to make _all
laws_ necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing
powers, and _all other_ powers vested by the constitution in the
government of the United States, or in any _department_ or _office_
thereof." To give the word "necessary" the restrictive operation
contended for, would not only depart from its obvious and popular
sense, but would give it the same force as if the word _absolutely_ or
_indispensably_ had been prefixed to it.

Such a construction would beget endless uncertainty and embarrassment.
The cases must be palpable and extreme in which it could be pronounced
with certainty that a measure was absolutely necessary, or one without
which a given power would be nugatory. There are few measures of any
government which would stand so severe a test. To insist upon it would
be to make the criterion of the exercise of an implied power _a case
of extreme necessity_; which is rather a rule to justify the
overleaping the bounds of constitutional authority than to govern the
ordinary exercise of it.

The degree in which a measure is necessary can never be a test of the
legal right to adopt it. The relation between the _measure_ and the
_end_; between the nature of the _mean_ employed towards the execution
of a power, and the object of that power must be the criterion of
constitutionality, not the more or less _necessity_ or _utility_.

The means by which national exigencies are to be provided for,
national inconveniences obviated, and national prosperity promoted,
are of such infinite variety, extent, and complexity, that here must
of necessity be great latitude of discretion in the selection and
application of those means. Hence the necessity and propriety of
exercising the authority intrusted to a government on principles of
liberal construction.

While on the one hand, the restrictive interpretation of the word
_necessary_ is deemed inadmissible, it will not be contended on the
other, that the clause in question gives any new and independent
power. But it gives an explicit sanction to the doctrine of implied
powers, and is equivalent to an admission of the proposition that the
government, _as to its specified powers and objects_, has plenary and
soverei