mon defense, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity," it only declares the inducements and the anticipated results
of the things ordained and established by it. To assume that anything
more can be designed by the language of the preamble would be to
convert all the body of the Constitution, with its carefully weighed
enumerations and limitations, into mere surplusage. The same may be said
of the phrase in the grant of the power to Congress "to pay the debts
and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United
States;" or, to construe the words more exactly, they are not
significant of grant or concession, but of restriction of the specific
grants, having the effect of saying that in laying and collecting
taxes for each of the precise objects of power granted to the General
Government Congress must exercise any such definite and undoubted power
in strict subordination to the purpose of the common defense and general
welfare of all the States.

There being no specific grant in the Constitution of a power to sanction
appropriations for internal improvements, and no general provision broad
enough to cover any such indefinite object, it becomes necessary to look
for particular powers to which one or another of the things included in
the phrase "internal improvements" may be referred.

In the discussions of this question by the advocates of the organization
of a "general system of internal improvements" under the auspices of the
Federal Government, reliance is had for the justification of the measure
on several of the powers expressly granted to Congress, such as to
establish post-offices and post-roads, to declare war, to provide and
maintain a navy, to raise and support armies, to regulate commerce, and
to dispose of the territory and other public property of the United
States,

As to the last of these sources of power, that of disposing of the
territory and other public property of the United States, it may be
conceded that it authorizes Congress, in the management of the public
property, to make improvements essential to the successful execution of
the trust; but this must be the primary object of any such improvement,
and it would be an abuse of the trust to sacrifice the interest of the
property to incidental purposes.

As to the other assumed sources of a general power over internal
improvements, they being specific powers of which this is sup