No. XXXIII.
By Alexander Hamilton.
The same subject continued.
The residue of the argument against the provisions of the constitution, in respect to taxation, is ingrafted upon the following clauses: The last clause of the eighth section of the first article, authorizes the national legislature
"to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper, for carrying into execution the powers by that constitution vested in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof;"
and the second clause of the sixth article declares, that
"the constitution and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, and the treaties made by their authority, shall be the supreme law of the land; any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding."
These two clauses have been the sources of much virulent invective, and petulant declamation, against the proposed constitution. They have been held up to the people in all the exaggerated colours of misrepresentation; as the pernicious engines by which their local governments were to be destroyed, and their liberties exterminated; as the hideous monster whose devouring jaws would spare neither sex nor age, nor high nor low, nor sacred nor profane; and yet, strange as it may appear, after all this clamour, to those who may not have happened to contemplate them in the same light, it may be affirmed with perfect confidence, that the constitutional operation of the intended government would be precisely the same, if these clauses were entirely obliterated, as if they were repeated in every article. They are only declaratory of a truth, which would have resulted by necessary and unavoidable implication from the very act of constituting a federal government, and vesting it with certain specified powers. This is so clear a proposition, that moderation itself can scarcely listen to the railings which have been so copiously vented against this part of the plan, without emotions that disturb its equanimity.
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