Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/277

1808 been robbed." If Congress had the right to regulate commerce for such a purpose in 1808, South Carolina seemed to have no excuse for questioning, twenty years later, the constitutionality of a protective system.  Still another argument was used by George W. Campbell of Tennessee.


 * "A limited embargo," he said, "can only mean an embargo that is to terminate at some given time; and the length of time, if a hundred years, will not change the character of the embargo,—it is still limited. If it be constitutional to lay it for one day, it must be equally so to lay it for ten days or a hundred days or as many years,—it would still be a limited embargo; and no one will, I presume, deny that an embargo laid for such a length of time, and one laid without limitation, would in reality and to all practical purposes be the same."

This reasoning was supported by an immense majority in both Houses of Congress; was accepted as sound by the Executive, and roused no protest from the legislature of any Southern State. So far as concerned all these high political authorities, the principle was thus settled that the Constitution, under the power to regulate commerce, conferred upon Congress the power to suspend foreign commerce forever; to suspend or otherwise regulate domestic and inter-state commerce; to subject all industry to governmental control, if such interference in the opinion of Congress was necessary or