






    James Madison, Federalist Paper 41:

    "It has been urged and echoed, that the power ``to lay and
     collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts,
     and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the
     United States,'' amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise
     every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common
     defense or general welfare...

    "No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which
     these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a
     misconstruction.  Had no other enumeration or definition of the
     powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the
     general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection
     might have had some color for it; ...  But what color can the
     objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by
     these general terms immediately follows, and is not even
     separated by a longer pause than a semicolon?  ...  Nothing is
     more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and
     then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars.
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