ulation of
commerce is a use of the regulatory function quite as definitely as
prohibitions or restrictions thereon. This record leaves us in no doubt
that Congress may properly have considered that wheat consumed on the
farm where grown, if wholly outside the scheme of regulation, would have
a substantial effect in defeating and obstructing its purpose to
stimulate trade therein at increased prices."[471] And it elsewhere
stated: "Questions of the power of Congress are not to be decided by
reference to any formula which would give controlling force to
nomenclature such as 'production' and 'indirect' and foreclose
consideration of the actual effects of the activity in question upon
interstate commerce. * * * The Court's recognition of the relevance of
the economic effects in the application of the Commerce Clause, * * *,
has made the mechanical application of legal formulas no longer
feasible."[472]

Acts of Congress Prohibiting Commerce

FOREIGN COMMERCE; JEFFERSON'S EMBARGO

"Jefferson's Embargo" of 1807-1808, which cut all trade with Europe, was
attacked on the ground that the power to regulate commerce was the power
to preserve it, not the power to destroy it. This argument was rejected
by Judge Davis of the United States District Court for Massachusetts in
the following words: "A national sovereignty is created [by the
Constitution]. Not an unlimited sovereignty, but a sovereignty, as to
the objects surrendered and specified, limited only by the
qualifications and restrictions, expressed in the Constitution. Commerce
is one of those objects. The care, protection, management and control,
of this great national concern, is, in my opinion, vested by the
Constitution, in the Congress of the United States; and their power is
sovereign, relative to commercial intercourse, qualified by the
limitations and restrictions, expressed in that instrument, and by the
treaty making power of the President and Senate. * * * Power to
regulate, it is said, cannot be understood to give a power to
annihilate. To this it may be replied, that the acts under
consideration, though of very ample extent, do not operate as a
prohibition of all foreign commerce. It will be admitted that partial
prohibitions are authorized by the expression; and how shall the degree,
or extent, of the prohibition be adjusted, but by the discretion of the
National Government, to whom the subject appears to be committed? * * *
The term does not necessarily