Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/521

 CH. XV.] settled upon the most solemn deliberation, that the power is exclusive in the government of the United States. The reasoning, upon which this doctrine is founded, is to the following effect. The power to regulate commerce is general and unlimited in its terms. The full power to regulate a particular subject implies the whole power, and leaves no residuum. A grant of the whole is incompatible with the existence of a right in another to any part of it. A grant of a power to regulate necessarily excludes the action of all others, who would perform the same operation on the same thing. Regulation is designed to indicate' the entire result, applying to those parts, which remain as they were, as well as to those, which are altered. It produces a uniform whole, which is as much disturbed and deranged by changing, .what the regulating power designs to have unbounded, as that, on which it has operated.

§ 1064. The power to regulate commerce is not at all like that to lay taxes. The latter may well be concurrent, while the former is exclusive, resulting from the different nature of the two powers. The power of congress in laying taxes is not necessarily, or naturally inconsistent with that of the states. Each may lay a tax on the same property, without interfering with the action of the other; for taxation is but taking small portions from the mass of property, which is susceptible of almost infinite division. In imposing taxes for state purposes, a state is not doing, what congress is empowered to do. Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes, 65