only by the duty of appropriating to the purposes of the common defence, and of general, not local, benefit. The first of these positions will be conceded by every one. The second admits of some doubt. Its soundness depends upon the true interpretation of the first of the enumerated powers of the Federal Constitution, that which contains the grant of the taxing power.[10] This is not the place to enter upon the discussion of controverted questions of constitutional interpretation. But all students of the Federal Constitution are aware that the grammatical construction of the clause to which Mr. Monroe referred, admits of, and has been claimed to admit of, two interpretations. Read by itself, and without reference to the other enumerated powers, this clause has been supposed by some persons to grant an unlimited power to tax for any purpose that in the judgment of Congress will promote the general welfare of the United States, provided only that the taxation is uniform. On the other hand, it has been contended that the clause is not a broad, independent, and specific power to tax for any object that will promote the general welfare of the United States, but that it is limited to the promotion of the general welfare through the exercise of some one or more of the other enumerated powers of the Constitution, each of which must receive its own scope from a just interpretation before the people of the United States can be taxed for the means of exercising that power. Viewed in the latter sense, the clause contains a grant of the power of taxation, general and universal in its nature, but limited as to its objects by the objects of each of the other enumerated powers. Viewed in the former sense, it becomes a separate and independent power to tax for any object that will promote the general welfare, without reference to the exercise of any of the specific powers of the Constitution which form the objects for which the Federal Government was created.