Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 2.djvu/311

 HARVARD

LAW REVIEW.

VOL II. FEBRUARY 15. 1889. No. 7.

LIMITATIONS IMPOSED BY THE FEDERAL CON- STITUTION ON THE RIGHT OF THE STATES TO ENACT QUARANTINE LAWS.

II.

HAVING considered the meaning of the term " regulation of commerce," and the test to be applied in order to determine whether a law is such a regulation, let us now inquire whether quarantine laws fall within the class of regulations of commerce permissible to the States. Upon few subjects in our constitutional law are the doctrines still so unsettled as upon the construction of the clause granting the commercial power to Congress. The object of granting this power was twofold. First, to secure uniformity of regulation instead of the discriminating legislation by which the States had taxed and otherwise burdened the commerce of one State for the benefit of another ; ^ and, second, to secure better commercial relations with foreign powers.^ The clause does not appear in the Constitution in the way in which it was originally proposed. In the " Plan of a Federal Constitu- tion" offered in the convention by Mr. Charles Pinckney, the clause appears thus : "The Legislature of the United States shall have the power ... to regulate commerce with all nations

1 Welton V. State of Missouri, 91 U. S. 275, 280. ^ Curtis, History of the Conititution, Bk. iii. ch. iv.