ent Constitution; and there is nothing, as I think,
clearer, than that the prevailing motive was _to regulate commerce_; to
rescue it from the embarrassing and destructive consequences resulting
from the legislation of so many different States, and to place it under
the protection of a uniform law. The great objects were commerce and
revenue; and they were objects indissolubly connected. By the
Confederation, divers restrictions had been imposed on the States; but
these had not been found sufficient. No State, it is true, could send or
receive an embassy; nor make any treaty; nor enter into any compact with
another State, or with a foreign power; nor lay duties interfering with
treaties which had been entered into by Congress. But all these were
found to be far short of what the actual condition of the country
required. The States could still, each for itself, regulate commerce,
and the consequence was a perpetual jarring and hostility of commercial
regulation.

In the history of the times, it is accordingly found, that the great
topic, urged on all occasions, as showing the necessity of a new and
different government, was the state of trade and commerce. To benefit
and improve these was a great object in itself; and it became greater
when it was regarded as the only means of enabling the country to pay
the public debt, and to do justice to those who had most effectually
labored for its independence. The leading state papers of the time are
full of this topic. The New Jersey resolutions[1] complain that the
regulation of trade was in the power of the several States, within their
separate jurisdiction, to such a degree as to involve many difficulties
and embarrassments; and they express an earnest opinion, that the sole
and exclusive power of regulating trade with foreign states ought to be
in Congress. Mr. Witherspoon's motion in Congress, in 1781, is of the
same general character; and the report of a committee of that body, in
1785, is still more emphatic. It declares that Congress ought to possess
the sole and exclusive power of regulating trade, as well with foreign
nations as between the States.[2] The resolutions of Virginia, in
January, 1786, which were the immediate cause of the Convention, put
forth this same great object. Indeed, it is the only object stated in
those resolutions. There is not another idea in the whole document. The
sole purpose for which the delegates assembled at Annapolis was to
devise means