537. Unless it were so used and understood, the National Government would have no direct power over Navigation; and could make no Laws prescribing the requisites to constitute "American Vessels," or requiring them to be navigated by "American Seamen;" which powers have been exercised from the commencement of its action, with the universal consent of the States, and the universal understanding that they were" commercial regulations."

538. The power to regulate Commerce, thus understood, extends to every species of commercial intercourse between the United States and foreign Nations, and amongst the States of the Union, and the Indian tribes.

539. Although, in regard to the several States, the power was not intended to comprehend that Commerce which is completely internal, yet, in regulating Commerce with foreign Nations, the power of Congress, in reference to that subject, is not limited by the jurisdictional boundaries of a State.

540. The Commerce of the United States with foreign Nations, is the Commerce of the whole Union; and each State or District has an equal right to participate in it, by means of the navigable streams which penetrate the country in all directions, and pass through the interior of almost every State in the Union.

541. The power of Congress to regulate foreign Commerce, must be exercised wherever the subject. exists; and as a foreign voyage may commence and terminate at a port within the same State, this power of Congress may be exercised within a State.

542. The power to prescribe the rule by which

Commerce is to be governed, like all other powers vested in Congress, is complete in itself, and may be exercised to its utmost extent, without any limitations but such as are prescribed in the Constitution.

543. As none of the restrictions upon the powers of Congress, which are expressed in the Constitution, affect the power in question; and as the sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specific objects, is plenary in regard to those objects; the power over Commerce is vested in the Government of the Union, as absolutely as it would exist in the Government of a single State, if the Union had not been formed, and the State Constitution had contained no further restrictions on the Legislative Power than are contained in the Constitution of the United States.

544. The discretion and wisdom of Congress, the identity of its members with the People of the several States, their dependence on their constituents, and their responsibility for misconduct in office, are in this case, as in many others, the only restraints upon which the community has relied to secure it from the abuse of the power; and these comprehend all the securities upon which the People must often of necessity rely in a Representative Government.

545. The power of Congress then comprehends Navigation within the limits of every State in the Union, so far as that Navigation may be in any manner connected with "Commerce with foreign Nations, or among the several States, or with the Indian tribes."

546. Although the individual States are important parts of the Federal system, and have retained a concurrent power of Legislation over many subjects of National jurisdiction; yet when a State proceeds

to regulate any but its purely internal Commerce, it exercises the identical power which is granted to the Union, and does the very thing which Congress alone is authorized to do.

547. As the power of Congress to regulate Commerce extends to Navigation carried on in vessels exclusively employed in carrying passengers, whether propelled by steam, or by the instrumentality of wind and sails, on waters wholly within a State, but which are navigable from the ocean, an exclusive privilege of Steam Navigation upon such waters claimed under a State, was judicially held to conflict with an authority to navigate the same waters, derived from the Laws of Congress; and so far as this interference extended, the State Law was declared void, as repugnant to the Federal Constitution.

548. As the power of regulating Commerce reaches the interior of a State, and may there be exercised, it is capable of authorizing the sale of those commodities which it introduces; because the efficacy of the power would be incomplete, if it ceased to operate at the point where the continuance of its operation is indispensable to its value.

549. The power to allow importation would be nugatory, if unaccompanied by the power to authorize the sale of the thing imported; for sale is the object of importation, and an essential ingredient in that Commercial intercourse of which importation constitutes a part, and as indispensable to the existence. of that intercourse, as importation itself.

550. The right of sale, as well as the right to import, being therefore considered as involved in the power to regulate Commerce, Congress has a right, not only to authorize importation, but to authorize the importer to sell.

551. An Act of a State Legislature, requiring wholsale importers and sellers of foreign goods to obtain a licence from the State, and to pay a sum of money for the privilege of selling, was consequently held to be void, as repugnant not only to that provision of the Constitution which restricts a State from laying duties on imports, but to that which invests Congress with the power "to regulate Commerce."

552. The power to regulate foreign Commerce extends to the regulation and government of seamen on board merchant ships belonging to citizens of the United States; to conferring privileges upon ships built and owned in the United States; to quarantine, pilotage, and embargo Laws; to wrecks of the seas; the construction of light-houses; the placing of buoys and beacons; the removal of obstructions to Navigation in creeks, rivers, sounds, and bays; to the establishment of securities to Navigation against inroads of the ocean; and to the designation of particular ports of entry and delivery for the purposes of foreign Commerce.

553. The regulation of Commerce has also been employed for the purposes of Revenue; of prohibition, retaliation, and commercial reciprocity; to encourage domestic Navigation; and to promote the shipping and mercantile interests by bounties, discriminating duties, and special preferences; and sometimes to regulate intercourse with a view to mere political objects.

554. It seems to be admitted that Congress may incidentally, in its arrangements for countervailing foreign restrictions, encourage the growth of domestic manufactures; but whilst, on the one hand, it is denied that Congress has a right permanently to prohibit any importations unreasonably for the purpose

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of fostering an interest in favour of which it has no power directly to interfere; it is insisted, on the other, that Congress does possess Constitutional power to encourage and protect manufactures, by appropriate regulations of Commerce.

555. The terms of the Constitution, in relation to this power, in connection with the power of laying and collecting duties, are supposed to be sufficiently large to embrace the protection of domestic industry; and both powers have been applied in practice to the encouragement of manufactures as well as of agriculture, from the commencement of the Government,

556. If Congress does not possess the power to encourage domestic manufactures, by regulations of Commerce, that power must, as has appeared, be annihilated for the whole Union; but as the People of the several States have made a voluntary surrender of the means essential to the exercise of that power, it seems more reasonable to conclude that the power exists in the National Government, than that it does not exist at all.

557. The Power of prohibiting the importation of Slaves into the United States after the year 1808, and of imposing an intermediate duty on their importation, is included in the power to regulate Commerce, as the restriction which postponed its exercise, arose from an express exception in the grant of the general power.

558. This power was fully exercised by Congress as soon as the limitation permitted, and in time to afford the first example of the abolition of a species of traffic which had long been the opprobrium of modern policy; and the interdiction has been fol