all and acts for all." However the question had not been left to reason. "The people have in express terms decided it by saying: 'This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land.'" But a Government which is supreme must have the right to choose the means by which to make its supremacy effective; and indeed, at this point again the Constitution comes to the aid of reason by declaring specifically that Congress may make all laws "necessary and proper" for carrying into execution any of the powers of the General Government. Counsel for Maryland would read this clause as limiting the right which it recognized to the choice only of such means of execution as are indispensable; they would treat the word "necessary" as controlling the clause and to this they would affix the word "absolutely." "Such is the character of human language," rejoins the Chief Justice, "that no word conveys to the mind in all situations, one single definite idea," and the word "necessary," "like others, is used in various senses," so that its context becomes most material in determining its significance. And what is its context on this occasion? "The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of a nation essentially depends." The provision occurs "in a Constitution intended to endure for ages to come and consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." The purpose of the clause therefore is not to impair the right of Congress "to exercise its best judgment in the selection of measures to carry into execution the constitutional powers of the Government," but rather "to remove all doubts respecting the right to legislate on that vast mass of incidental powers which must be involved in the Constitution, if that instrument be not a splendid bauble.... Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited but consist with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional."