Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/515

 CH. XV.] clauses to limit them. In the present case there is nothing to justify such a limitation. Commerce undoubtedly is traffic; but it is something more. It is intercourse. It describes the commercial intercourse between nations, and parts of nations, in all its branches; and is regulated by prescribing rules for carrying on that intercourse. The mind can scarcely conceive a system for regulating commerce between nations, which shall exclude all laws concerning navigation; which shall be silent on the admission of the vessels of one nation into the ports of another; and be confined to prescribing rules for the conduct of individuals in the actual employment of buying and selling, or barter.

§ 1058. If commerce does not include navigation, the government of the Union has no direct power over that subject, and can make no law prescribing, what shall constitute American vessels, or requiring, that they shall be navigated by American seamen. Yet this power has been exercised from the commencement of the government; it has been exercised with the consent of all America; and it has been always understood to be a commercial regulation. The power over navigation, and over commercial intercourse, was one of the primary objects, for which the people of America adopted their government; and it is impossible, that the convention should not so have understood the word "commerce," as embracing it. Indeed, to construe the power, so as to impair its efficacy, would defeat the very object, for which it was introduced into the constitution; for there cannot be a doubt, that to exclude