Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/517

 CH. XV.] § 1060. Foreign and domestic intercourse has been universally understood to be within the reach of the power. How, otherwise, could our systems of prohibition and non-intercourse be defended? From what other source has been derived the power of laying embargoes in a time of peace, and without any reference to war, or its operations? Yet this power has been universally admitted to be constitutional, even in times of the highest political excitement. And although the laying of an embargo in the form of a perpetual law was contested, as unconstitutional, at one period of our political history, it was so, not because an embargo was not a regulation of commerce, but because a perpetual embargo was an annihilation, and not a regulation of commerce. It may, therefore, be safely affirmed, that the terms of the constitution have at all times been understood to include a power over navigation, as well as trade, over intercourse, as well as traffic; and, that, in the practice of other countries, and especially in our own, there has been no diversity of judgment or opinion. During our whole colonial history, this was acted upon by the British parliament, as an uncontested doctrine. That government regulated not merely our traffic with foreign nations, but our navigation, and intercourse, as unquestioned functions of the power to regulate commerce.