nities is
universally regulated by duties and imposts. It was so regulated by the
States before the adoption of this Constitution equally in respect to
each other and to foreign powers. The goods and vessels employed in the
trade are the only subjects of regulation. It can act on none other.
A power, then, to impose such duties and imposts in regard to foreign
nations and to prevent any on the trade between the States was the only
power granted.

If we recur to the causes which produced the adoption of this
Constitution, we shall 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