"They are not to do anything 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 may be
good for 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 please...Certainly no
such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them
up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means,
these powers could not be carried into effect." –
Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791
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