CH. XV.]
POWERS OF CONGRESS—COMMERCE.
523
§ 1076. The reasoning of those, who maintain the doctrine, that congress has authority to apply the power to regulate commerce to the purpose of protecting and encouraging domestic manufactures, is to the following effect. The power to regulate commerce, being in its terms unlimited, includes all means appropriate to the end, and all means, which have been usually exerted under the power. No one can doubt or deny, that a power to regulate trade involves a power to tax it. It is a familiar mode, recognised in the practice of all nations, and was known and admitted by the United States, while they were colonies, and has ever since been acted upon without opposition or question. The American colonies wholly denied the authority of the British parliament to tax them, except as a regulation of commerce; but they admitted this exercise of power, as legitimate and unquestionable. The distinction was with difficulty maintained in practice between laws for the regulation of commerce by way of taxation, and laws, which were made for mere monopoly, or restriction, when they incidentally produced revenue.
[1] And it is certain, that the main and admitted object of parliamentary regulations of trade with the colonies was the encouragement of manufactures in Great-Britain.
could be, from documents admitted to be of high authority by those, who maintain the restrictive doctrine. See the Exposition and Protest of the South Carolina legislature, in Dec. 1828, attributed to Mr. Vice President Calhoun; the Address of the Free Trade Convention at Philadelphia, in Oct. 1831, attributed to Mr. Attorney General Berrien; the Oration of the Hon. Mr. Drayton, on the 4th of July, 1831; and the Speech of Mr. Senator Hayne, 9th of Jan. 1832. See also 4 Jefferson's Corresp. 421.
- ↑ See Mr. Madison's Letter to Mr. Cabell, 18th Sept. 1828; Mr. Verplanck's Letter to Col. Drayton, in 1831; Address of the New-York Convention in favour of Domestic Industry, November, 1831, p. 12, 13, 14; 9 Wheat. R. 202; 1 Pitk. Hist. ch. 3, p. 93 to 106.
