e of the Federal Government. Generous
impulses no longer encounter the limitations and control of our
imperious fundamental law; for however worthy may be the present object
in itself, it is only one of a class. It is not exclusively worthy of
benevolent regard. Whatever considerations dictate sympathy for this
particular object apply in like manner, if not in the same degree, to
idiocy, to physical disease, to extreme destitution. If Congress may
and ought to provide for any one of these objects, it may and ought to
provide for them all. And if it be done in this case, what answer shall
be given when Congress shall be called upon, as it doubtless will be, to
pursue a similar course of legislation in the others? It will obviously
be vain to reply that the object is worthy, but that the application has
taken a wrong direction. The power will have been deliberately assumed,
the general obligation will by this act have been acknowledged, and the
question of means and expediency will alone be left for consideration.
The decision upon the principle in any one case determines it for the
whole class. The question presented, therefore, clearly is upon the
constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming
to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of
providing for the care and support of all those among the people of the
United States who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public
philanthropy.

I readily and, I trust, feelingly acknowledge the duty incumbent on us
all as men and citizens, and as among the highest and holiest of our
duties, to provide for those who, in the mysterious order of Providence,
are subject to want and to disease of body or mind; but I can not find
any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the
great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so
would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the
Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of
these States is founded. And if it were admissible to contemplate the
exercise of this power for any object whatever, I can not avoid the
belief that it would in the end be prejudicial rather than beneficial in
the noble offices of charity to have the charge of them transferred from
the States to the Federal Government. Are we not too prone to forget
that the Federal Union is the creature of the States, not they of
the Federal Union?