Still less are these powers covered by any other of the special enumerations.

II.  Nor are they within either of the general phrases, which are the two following.

1.  ’To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States’; that is to say, ’to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare.’  For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised.  Congress are not to lay taxes, ad libitum, for any purpose they please:  but only to pay the debts, or provide for the welfare of the Union.  In like manner, they are not to do any thing they please, to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose.  To consider the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.  It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they pleased.  It is an established rule of construction, where a phrase will bear either of two meanings, to give it that which will allow some meaning to the other parts of the instrument, and not that which will render all the others useless.  Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them.  It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers, and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.  It is known that the very power now proposed as a means, was rejected as an end by the convention which formed the constitution.  A proposition was made to them, to authorize Congress to open parials, and an amendatory one, to empower them to incorporate.  But the whole was rejected; and one of the reasons of rejection urged in debate was, that they then would have a power to erect a bank, which would render the great cities, where there were prejudices and jealousies on that subject, adverse to the reception of the constitution.

2.  The second general phrase is, ’to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution the enumerated powers.’  But they can all be carried into execution without a bank.  A bank, therefore, is not necessary, and consequently, not authorized by this phrase.

It has been much urged, that a bank will give great facility or convenience in the collection of taxes.  Suppose this were true:  yet the constitution allows only the means which are ‘necessary’ not those which are merely ‘convenient’ for effecting the enumerated powers.  If such a latitude of construction be allowed to this phrase, as to give any non-enumerated power, it will go to every one; for there is no one which ingenuity may not torture into a convenience, in some way or other, to some one of so long a list of enumerated powers.  It would swallow up all the delegated powers, and reduce the whole to one phrase, as before observed.  Therefore it was, that the constitution restrained them to the necessary means, that is to say, to those means without which the grant of the power would be nugatory.