Note 437 — Chapter VII · The Extension of Federal Control through Exclusion from the Mails

Veazie v. Fenno, above. The distinction has sometimes been drawn between acknowledged powers and implied powers of Congress. For example, the power to tax and to regulate interstate commerce is granted in the Constitution, while that to exclude from the mails is implied from the postal clause. From this it is argued that Congress may be limited in its indirect control under an implied power when the same objection would not apply to the exercise of an acknowledged power. (See the brief of James M. Beck in the newspaper publicity case, printed in Cong. Rec., December 11, 1912.) But this distinction has never been sanctioned by the Supreme Court of the United States.

It is proper, however, in this connection to point out the extraordinary nature of the taxing power, which is, in Marshall’s phrase, the “power to destroy.”