peated, that
the words used in the Constitution, "to regulate commerce," are so very
general and extensive, that they may be construed to cover a vast field
of legislation, part of which has always been occupied by State laws;
and therefore the words must have a reasonable construction, and the
power should be considered as exclusively vested in Congress so far, and
so far only, as the nature of the power requires. And I insist, that the
nature of the case, and of the power, did imperiously require, that such
important authority as that of granting monopolies of trade and
navigation should not be considered as still retained by the States.

It is apparent from the prohibitions on the power of the States, that
the general concurrent power was not supposed to be left with them. And
the exception out of these prohibitions of the inspection laws proves
this still more clearly. Which most concerns the commerce of this
country, that New York and Virginia should have an uncontrolled power to
establish their inspection of flour and tobacco, or that they should
have an uncontrolled power of granting either a monopoly of trade in
their own ports, or a monopoly of navigation over all the waters leading
to those ports? Yet the argument on the other side must be, that,
although the Constitution has sedulously guarded and limited the first
of these powers, it has left the last wholly unlimited and uncontrolled.

But although much has been said, in the discussion on former occasions,
about this supposed concurrent power in the States, I find great
difficulty in understanding what is meant by it. It is generally
qualified by saying, that it is a power by which the States could pass
laws on subjects of commercial regulation, which would be valid until
Congress should pass other laws controlling them, or inconsistent with
them, and that then the State laws must yield. What sort of concurrent
powers are these, which cannot exist together? Indeed, the very reading
of the clause in the Constitution must put to flight this notion of a
general concurrent power. The Constitution was formed for all the
States; and Congress was to have power to regulate commerce. Now, what
is the import of this, but that Congress is to give the rule, to
establish the system, to exercise the control over the subject? And can
more than one power, in cases of this sort, give the rule, establish the
system, or exercise the control? As it is not contended that the po