merce among the states from each other. The same public policy applies to each; and not a reason can be assigned for confiding the power over the one, which does not conduce to establish the propriety of conceding the power over the other.

§ 516. The next inquiry is, whether this power to regulate commerce is exclusive of the same power in the states, or is concurrent with it. It has been settled upon the most solemn deliberation, that the power is exclusive in the government of the United States. The reasoning, upon which this doctrine is founded, is to the following effect. The power to regulate commerce is general and unlimited in its terms. The full power to regulate a particular subject implies the whole power, and leaves no residuum. A grant of the whole is incompatible with the existence of a right in another to any part of it. A grant of a power to regulate necessarily excludes the action of all others, who would perform the same operation on the same thing. Regulation is designed to indicate the entire result, applying to those parts, which remain as they were, as well as to those, which are altered. It produces a uniform whole, which is as much disturbed and deranged by changing, what the regulating power designs to have unbounded, as that, on which it has operated.

§ 517. The power to regulate commerce is not at all like that to lay taxes. The latter may well be concurrent, while the former is exclusive, resulting from the different nature of the two powers. The power of congress in laying taxes is not necessarily, or naturally inconsistent with that of the states. Each may lay a tax on the same property, without interfering with the action of the other; for taxation is but taking small portions

from the mass of property, which is susceptible of almost infinite division. In imposing taxes for state purposes, a state is not doing, what congress is empowered to do. Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes, which are within the exclusive province of the states. When, then, each government exercises the power of taxation, neither is exercising the power of the other. But when a state proceeds to regulate commerce with foreign nations, or among the several states, it is exercising the very power, whit is granted to congress; and is doing the very thin which congress is authorized to do. There is nology, then, between the power of taxation, and the power of regulating com

merce.

§ 518. Nor can any power be inferred in the states to regulate commerce from other clauses in the constitution, or the acknowledged rights exercised by the states. The constitution has prohibited the states from laying any impost or duty on imports or exports; but this does not admit, that the state might otherwise have exercised the power, as a regulation of commerce. The laying of such imposts and duties may be, and indeed often is used, as a mere regulation of commerce, by governments possessing that power. But the laying of such imposts and duties is as certainly, and more usually, a right exercised as a part of the power to lay taxes; and with this latter power the states are clearly entrusted. So, that the prohibition is an exception from the acknowledged power of the state to lay taxes, and not from the questionable power to regulate commerce. Indeed, the constitution treats these as distinct and independent powers. The same remarks apply to a duty on tonnage.

§ 519. Nor do the acknowledged powers of the

states over certain subjects, having a connexion with commerce, in any degree impugn this reasoning. These powers are entirely distinct in their nature from that to regulate commerce; and though the same means may be resorted to, for the purpose of carrying each of these powers into effect, this by no just reasoning furnishes any ground to assert, that they are identical. Among these, are inspection laws, health laws, laws regulating turnpikes, roads, and ferries, all of which, when exercised by a state, are legitimate, arising from the general powers belonging to it, unless so far as they conflict with the powers delegated to congress. They are not so much regulations of commerce, as of police; and may truly be said to belong, if at all to commerce, to that which is purely internal. The pilotage laws of the states may fall under the same description. But they have been adopted by congress; and without question are controllable by it.

§ 520. The power in congress, then, being exclusive, no state is at liberty to pass any laws imposing a tax upon importers, importing goods from foreign countries, or from other states. It is wholly immaterial whether the tax be laid on the goods imported, or on the person of the importer. In each case, it is a restriction of the right of commerce, not conceded to the states. As the power of congress to regulate commerce reaches the interior of a state, it might be capable of authorizing the sale of the articles, which it introduces. Commerce is intercourse; and one of its most ordinary ingredients is traffic. It is inconceivable, that the power to authorize traffic, when given in the most comprehensive terms, with the intent, that its efficacy should be complete, should cease at the point, when its continuance is indispensable to its value. To what

purpose should the should the power to allow importation be given, unaccompanied with the power to authorize the sale of the thing imported? Sale is the object of importation; and it is an essential ingredient of that intercourse, of which importation constitutes a part. As congress have the right to authorize importation, they must have a right to authorize the importer to sell. What would be the language of a foreign government, which should be informed, that its merchants after importation were forbidden to sell the merchandize imported? What answer could the United States give to the complaints and just reproaches, to which such extraordinary conduct would expose them? No apology could be received, or offered. Such a state of things would annihilate commerce. It is no answer, that the tax may be moderate; for, if the power exists in the states, it may be carried to any extent they may choose. If it does not exist, every exercise of it is, pro tanto, a violation of the power of congress to regulate commerce.

§ 521. In the next place, to what extent, and for what objects and purposes the power to regulate commerce may be constitutionally applied.

It is not doubt

§ 522. And first, among the states. ed, that it extends to the regulation of navigation, and to the coasting trade and fisheries, within, as well as without any state, wherever it is connected with the commerce or intercourse with any other state, or with foreign nations. It extends to the regulation and government of seamen on board of American ships; and to conferring privileges upon ships built and owned in the United States in domestic, as well as in foreign trade. It extends to quarantine laws, and pilotage laws, and wrecks of the sea. It extends, to the navigation of vessels engaged in carrying passengers, (whether

steam vessels, or of any other description,) as well as to the navigation of vessels engaged in traffic and general coasting business. It extends to the laying of embargoes, as well on domestic, as on foreign voyages. It extends to the construction of light-houses, the placing of buoys and beacons, the removal of obstructions to navigation in creeks, rivers, sounds, and bays, and the establishment of securities to navigation against the inroads of the ocean. It extends also to the designation of particular ports of entry and delivery for the purposes of commerce: The power has been actually exerted for these purposes by the national government under systems of laws, some of which are almost coeval with the establishment of the constitution; and these laws have continued unquestioned unto our day, if not to the utmost range of their reach, at least to that of their ordinary application.

§ 523. Secondly. Many like applications of the power may be traced in the regulations of the commerce of the United States with foreign nations. It has also been employed sometimes for the purpose of revenue; sometimes for the purpose of prohibition; sometimes for the purpose of retaliation and commercial reciprocity; sometimes to lay embargoes; sometimes to encourage domestic navigation, and the shipping and mercantile interest by bounties, by discriminating duties, and by special preferences and privileges; and sometimes to regulate intercourse with a view to mere political objects, such as to repel aggressions, increase the pressure of war, or vindicate the rights of neutral sovereignty. In all these cases, the right and duty have been conceded to the national government by the unequivocal voice of the people.