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welfare of the people of the United States-i. e., that Congress can appropriate money to an institution that it is denied the power to create. The question, therefore, is brought sharply to this issue: Did the men constituting this committee intend, by the insertion of these words, to destroy the Pinckney plan containing only specific grants of power to Congress, which had been passed unanimously by the convention without a single negative vote on the 6th of August previously? An examination of this committee will show that the majority of them could never have agreed to any such proposition. The known sentiments of at least seven of them, and probably nine, show conclusively that their insertion of these words was never considered by them as authorizing the construction put upon them by the Hamiltonians, or by the learned Judge Story. Among this number Mr. Madison stands out preeminently as having shown and demonstrated beyond question that these words did not have, and could not have, such meaning. The evidence of their positions may be gathered from several sources.

Mr. Abraham Baldwin, a member of this committee, on June 17, 1798, as a Member of Congress, uses this language:

That part of the first article of the eighth section, which declares "Congress shall have power to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," had never been considered as a source of legislative power, as it is only a member introduced to limit the other parts of the sentence, and not of itself a substantive power, as will be seen by recurring to the words of the first sentence of the eighth section.

On the 16th of July, in the convention, Mr. Pierce Butler, also a member of this committee, and Mr. Gorham, of Massachusetts, and Mr. Rutledge, of South Carolina, were participants in a debate in the convention, which showed Mr. Butler was favorable to specific grants of power to Congress and was objecting to general and indefinite grants that were suggested. But there was one gentleman on the committee, Mr. Gouverneur Morris, of Pennsylvania, who knew that these words as reported by the committee were the death knell to the proposition of Mr. Hamilton, as may be seen from the following incident.

Albert Gallatin, of Pennsylvania, was one of the most distinguished men of his day. On the 16th of June, 1798, as a Member of Congress, he made a speech on this clause, in which he said:

He (Gallatin) was well informed that these words had originally been inserted in the Constitution as a limitation to the power of laying taxes. After the limitation had been agreed to, and the Constitution was completed, a member of the convention (he was one of the members who représented the State of Pennsylvania), being one of a committee of revisal and arrangement, attempted to throw these words into a distinct paragraph, so as to create not a limitation, but a distinct power. The trick, however, was discovered by a member from Connecticut, now deceased, and the words restored as they now stand. So that Mr. Gallatin said, whether he referred to the Constitution itself, to the most able defenders of it, or to the State conventions, the only rational construction which could be given to that clause was that it was a limitation, and not an extension of powers. (U. S. Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 1797-1799, vol. 8, p. 1796.)

For confirmation of the above see The Framing of the Constitution, Max Farrand, page 182.

It is of interest to note that Abraham Baldwin, a member of this committee, was a member of the Federal Convention and a Member of the same Congress (the Fifth) that Gallatin was, and engaged with him in this debate, and he doubtlessly heard Gallatin's statement, and there was no denial of it from him.

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Who was the member from Pennsylvania in the convention who attempted this "trick"? It is easy to ascertain who he was. being designated as one of a committee of revisal and arrangement in the convention we find that the member from Pennsylvania on that committee was Gouverneur Morris. And who was the member from Connecticut that discovered the "trick"? By the process of elimination this is easily discovered because Mr. Gallatin said "he is now dead." The Gallatin words were spoken in 1798. Johnson, Ellsworth, and Roger Sherman were the members of the convention from Connecticut. Johnson and Ellsworth died after 1800, and Roger Sherman died in 1793; and Roger Sherman, who detected this "trick," was a member of this committee of 11 that brought in this report, and, having prevented Morris from making the change by throwing these words into a distinct paragraph, it showed first that Sherman was opposed to the unlimited power attempted to be given to these words by Morris's "trick," and, second, that Morris was trying to make the change to carry out Hamilton's idea, because the clause as adopted September 4 was fatal to Hamilton's desire for unlimited powers.

This "trick" described by Mr. Gallatin as attempted by Gouverneur Morris arose out of the fact that on the 8th of September the convention appointed a committee "of five to revise the style and arrange the articles agreed to by the House." The committee was composed of Samuel Johnson, Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, Madison, and King, and on the 12th of September that committee made its report and article 1, section 8, appears as follows:

They shall

SEC. 8. The Congress may, by joint ballot, appoint a treasurer. have 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;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the several States, and with the Indian tribes, etc. (Journal of Federal Convention, Boston, 1819.)

Had the Constitution been ratified in that form, there would be considerable ground for asserting that it contained the Hamiltonian idea of unlimited power, for here these words are taken from a dependent position in the first clause of section 8 as a part of it, and have no relation to the power of taxation as set forth in that clause, and are entirely divorced from this clause, and by their location are made an independent, separate clause, and become one of the substantive grants of power to Congress, just as the other 17 grants in this

sentence.

This report made by the committee on style was made to the convention on September 12. The Constitution was voted on and adopted by the convention on the 15th of September, but between those two dates the Journal makes no further mention of it and there is no other reference to it in the Journal, but when the Constitution appeared as finally signed by the members this clause was unchanged and was in the exact form adopted by the convention on the 4th of September. The attempt to change it had failed. This committee on style in the dying hours of the convention that proposed this Hamiltonian power for Congress, which had been rejected five times. before this by the convention, has an unknown genesis (unless it may be found in Roger Sherman's discovery) and its paternity is also unknown, for its proponent in the convention (September 8) is not given

in the Journal, but only the featureless words "It was moved and seconded." Who was the mover of the resolution? And what was the necessity for the committee? Three of its members (Morris, Madison, and King) were all members of the committee of 11, one from each State, appointed August 31, that had large and complete powers to deal not only with what already had been acted upon but what might yet be considered by the convention. This much at least is known, that a majority of the five were Hamiltonians, and the failure of their report presented on the 12th of September on this section was the expiring gasp of centralized power in its failure to incorporate imperial power in the Constitution of the United States.

Another evidence of the views of this committee is to be gathered by the statement made by Luther Martin, one of the greatest figures in the convention, who, on his return home, addressed the Maryland Legislature, giving an account of the convention. In it he said there were three parties in the convention; first, the Hamiltonians, who desired to annihilate the States and establish a government of a monarchical nature; secondly, those who were opposed to the abolition of the States and the adoption of a monarchical government, but who wished for greater powers for the great States in the Union; and, third, "was what I consider truly federal and republican; this party was nearly equal in number with the other two and was composed of the delegations from Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and in part from Maryland; also of some individuals from other representations."

On this committee of 11 were Mr. Sherman from Connecticut, Mr. Brearly from New Jersey, Mr. Dickinson from Delaware, and Mr. Carroll from Maryland.

Professor Beard, in his book Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, page 35, says of Abraham Baldwin:

Baldwin was in the opposition from the beginning and remained a consistent republican until his death.

Mr. Jefferson said of John Dickinson of Delaware that he was "an orthodox advocate of the true principles of our new government." (Jefferson's Works (Washington ed.), Vol. V, p. 249.)

In The Framing of the Constitution by Max Farrand, page 81, he mentions a number of the members of the convention who advocated a strong national government and those who were opposed to such. Among the latter he names Sherman, Brearly, Dickinson, and Butler.

The position of Hugh Williamson, of North Carolina, a member of the committee of 11, might well be determined alone by the position of North Carolina in refusing to ratify the Constitution for two years because of the need of amendments. As a member of the second North Carolina convention called to ratify the Constitution his position is more clearly seen by a motion made by him to ratify the Constitution as concluded at Philadelphia September 17, 1787. As the Constitution contained, when passed, the exact form of this section and clause recommended by the committee of 11 on the 4th of September, the conclusion is final that he favored that form. (See North Carolina States Records, vol. 22, p. 41, Raleigh, 1907.) Thus we find in our conclusion that there is no general-welfare clause in the Constitution; that the power of Congress to legislate for every object which in their opinion might be for the benefit of

the people, pressed by Mr. Hamilton in the convention, was six times, directly or indirectly, rejected by that body; and, in spite of that, his followers have sought to construe these words as meaning what the authors of the Constitution had six times successively rejected; while Judge Story's construction lands us in the same morass, a government of unlimited power, though he reaches it by a different road.

These facts show that a large majority of the committee of 11 that reported these words to be incorporated into the first clause of section 8 of Article I were strongly opposed to the views of Mr. Hamilton and those of Judge Story that lead to the same end, though by different routes, a government of unlimited powers.

In support of our views, we present a long catalogue of distinguished statesmen, judges, and authors, who sustain our position: Primus inter pares, Chief Justice Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland, fourth Wheaton, 316.

Gibbons v. Ogden, ninth Wheaton, 1.

Virginia Constitutional Convention, 1829-30, on the militia. Judge Brewer in Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U. S. 89, and Fairbanks . United States, 181 U. S.

Judge Miller in Loan Association v. Topeka, 20 Wallace 655.
Judge Miller on the Constitution, page 229, note 2.

Mr. Madison, Resolutions of 1798.

Mr. Madison's Message May 4, 1822.

Federalist No. 41.

Veto Message March 3, 1817.

Letter of Madison to Andrew Stevenson.

Supplement to letter to Andrew Stevenson. (Writings of James Madison by Gaillard Hunt, Vol. IX, p. 424.)

Cooley on Taxation, second edition, page 110.

Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, pages 11 and 106.
Willoughby on the Constitution, volume 1, page 40.

James Wilson (Wilson's Works: Andrews, vol. 2, pp. 56-59). John C. Calhoun, February 20, 1837, United States Senate. (Works of Calhoun, Vol. III, p. 36.)

Mr. Jefferson on power of Congress to establish Bank of the United States, February 15, 1791.

Letter to Judge Spencer Roane, October 12, 1815. (Works of Jefferson by Paul Leicester Ford, 1905, Vol. XI, p. 489.)

Von Holst, a Strong Federalist, Constitutional Law of the United States, page 118.

Hare, American Constitutional Law, volume 1, pages 242-243. William A. Duer, Constitutional Jurisprudence, second edition, page 211.

Grover Cleveland, veto message to the House of Representatives making appropriations for drought-stricken counties in the Southwest. B. J. Sage in Republic of Republics.

Calvin Coolidge, addresses of, Budget meeting January 21, 1924, and annual message, December 8, 1925.

Tucker on the Constitution, Volume I, pages 477-478-480. Chief Justice Taney in Dobbins v. Commissioners of Erie County, Sixteenth Peters, 448-449.

Chief Justice Chase in Veazy v. Fenno, Eighth Wallace, 541.

And who upholds the opposite view? Judge Story and Pomeroy. Where lies the weight of authority?

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