former instrument, and to be applied alike to post-offices and post-roads.  In whatever sense it is applied to post-offices it must be applied in the same sense to post-roads.  But it may be asked, If such was the intention, why were not all the other terms of the grant transferred with it?  The reason is obvious.  The Confederation being a bond of union between independent States, it was necessary in granting the powers which were to be exercised over them to be very explicit and minute in defining the powers granted.  But the Constitution to the extent of its powers having incorporated the States into one Government like the government of the States individually, fewer words in defining the powers granted by it were not only adequate, but perhaps better adapted to the purpose.  We find that brevity is a characteristic of the instrument.  Had it been intended to convey a more enlarged power in the Constitution than had been granted in the Confederation, surely the same controlling term would not have been used, or other words would have been added, to show such intention and to mark the extent to which the power should be carried.  It is a liberal construction of the powers granted in the Constitution by this term to include in it all the powers that were granted in the Confederation by terms which specifically defined and, as was supposed, extended their limits.  It would be absurd to say that by omitting from the Constitution any portion of the phraseology which was deemed important in the Confederation the import of that term was enlarged, and with it the powers of the Constitution, in a proportional degree, beyond what they were in the Confederation.  The right to exact postage and to protect the post-offices and mails from robbery by punishing the offenders may fairly be considered as incidents to the grant, since without it the object of the grant might be defeated.  Whatever is absolutely necessary to the accomplishment of the object of the grant, though not specified, may fairly be considered as included in it.  Beyond this the doctrine of incidental power can not be carried.

If we go back to the origin of our settlements and institutions and trace their progress down to the Revolution, we shall see that it was in this sense, and in none other, that the power was exercised by all our colonial governments.  Post-offices were made for the country, and not the country for them.  They are the offspring of improvement; they never go before it.  Settlements are first made, after which the progress is uniform and simple, extending to objects in regular order most necessary to the comfort of man—­schools, places of public worship, court-houses, and markets; post-offices follow.  Roads may, indeed, be said to be coeval with settlements; they lead to all the places mentioned, and to every other which the various and complicated interests of society require.