find that injuries resulting from the regulation
of trade by the States respectively and the advantages anticipated from
the transfer of the power to Congress were among those which had the
most weight. Instead of acting as a nation in regard to foreign powers,
the States individually had commenced a system of restraint on each
other whereby the interests of foreign powers were promoted at their
expense. If one State imposed high duties on the goods or vessels of a
foreign power to countervail the regulations of such power, the next
adjoining States imposed lighter duties to invite those articles into
their ports, that they might be transferred thence into the other
States, securing the duties to themselves. This contracted policy in
some of the States was soon counteracted by others. Restraints were
immediately laid on such commerce by the suffering States; and thus had
grown up a state of affairs disorderly and unnatural, the tendency of
which was to destroy the Union itself and with it all hope of realizing
those blessings which we had anticipated from the glorious Revolution
which had been so recently achieved. From this deplorable dilemma, or,
rather, certain ruin, we were happily rescued by the adoption of the
Constitution.

Among the first and most important effects of this great Revolution
was the complete abolition of this pernicious policy. The States
were brought together by the Constitution, as to commerce, into one
community, equally in regard to foreign nations and each other. The
regulations that were adopted regarded us in both respects as one
people. The duties and imposts that were laid on the vessels and
merchandise of foreign nations were all uniform throughout the United
States, and in the intercourse between the States themselves no duties
of any kind were imposed other than between different ports and
counties within the same State.

This view is supported by a series of measures, all of a marked
character, preceding the adoption of the Constitution. As early as the
year 1781 Congress recommended it to the States to vest in the United
States a power to levy a duty of 5 per cent on all goods imported from
foreign countries into the United States for the term of fifteen years.
In 1783 this recommendation, with alterations as to the kind of duties
and an extension of this term to twenty-five years, was repeated and
more earnest