When Jefferson wrote of “every question of construction”, what was “construction”? I can’t quite make it out from context. Every question of the original document, i.e. how to interpret it?
I believe ‘construction’ refers to how a thought is worded, exactly which word is used and, in what grammatical context.
Clearly, the term was stated as, promote the general welfare, not, to provide for the general welfare. "They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare.... [G]iving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please." -- Thomas Jefferson "Our tenet ever was that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money. " -- Thomas Jefferson letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817