The statement sometimes loosely made that a description of our government is contained in the constitution, is apt to be misleading.  The constitution has served rather as a foundation upon which to build the government, than as an entire framework.  As a distinguished writer has termed it, “The constitution was meant only as a scheme in outline, to be filled up afterwards, and from time to time, by legislation.”

A description of our present form of government is far from being contained in the instrument adopted in 1788.  For example, the constitution makes no mention of how business shall be transacted by the legislature.  Committee Government in Congress owes its existence to no provision of the constitution.  The only mention made in the constitution of the Speaker of the House, to-day the most powerful officer in the legislature, is where it is provided that “The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers.”  All executive departments—­the State, War, Navy, Treasury, Post Office, Interior, Justice, Agriculture, and Labor—­have been created from time to time by act of Congress.  Regarding the structure and number of federal courts, the constitution merely provides that “The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”  Our elaborate system of district, circuit, and territorial courts, rests solely upon congressional enactments.  So, too, the constitution gives to Congress the control of territories, but does not provide how that control shall be exercised.

The framers of our constitution were wise in not attempting to specify more particularly than they did, the manner in which the several powers granted to the Federal Government should be exercised.  They realized that they were forming a scheme that was to endure for many years, and that if it was to be capable of meeting the needs of a changing and rapidly growing country, it would have to be elastic, and contain within itself the power of adapting itself to new needs and conditions.  To secure the beneficial execution of the powers granted, Congress was given the power of selecting appropriate means.  To have refused the grant of this power, would have been to attempt to provide by unchangeable rule for emergencies that could by no possibilities be foreseen.  Or, as Chief Justice Marshall has put it, “It would have been to deprive the legislature of the capacity to avail itself of experience, to exercise its reason, and to accommodate its legislation to circumstances.”

After enumerating the various particular powers given to the Federal Legislature, the constitution further says (Art.  I, Sec. 8) “and [shall have power] to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.”  This is the clause under whose authorization all those powers have been assumed, and functions exercised, that have made the United States government of to-day so different from that of 1789.