The Constitution had been ratified. The new government was operating. The first real test of what the Constitution meant came not from a foreign crisis but from a domestic one: whether Congress had the power to charter a bank. The answer depended entirely on how you read three words in Article I: 'necessary and proper.'
Hamilton submitted his Report on a National Bank to Congress on December 14, 1790. The bill passed. Washington, uncertain about its constitutionality, asked his cabinet for written opinions. Jefferson submitted his opinion on February 15, 1791, arguing that the Necessary and Proper Clause authorized only laws absolutely required to execute an enumerated power, and that a bank was not necessary in that strict sense. Hamilton submitted his opinion on February 23, 1791, arguing that 'necessary' meant useful or conducive, not absolutely indispensable.
Washington signed the Bank Bill on February 25, 1791. Hamilton's reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause became the operative constitutional interpretation. The debate it opened, between strict and broad construction, continued through every subsequent generation of constitutional law.
This criterion is the end to which the measure relates as a mean. If the end be clearly comprehended within any of the specified powers, and if the measure have an obvious relation to that end, and is not forbidden by any particular provision of the constitution -- it may safely be deemed to come within the compass of the national authority.
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