Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/522

 514 which are within the exclusive province of the states. When, then, each government exercises the power of taxation, neither is exercising the power of the other. But when a state proceeds to regulate commerce with foreign nations, or among the several states, it is exercising the very power, which is granted to congress; and is doing the very thing, which congress is authorized to do. There is no analogy, then, between the power of taxation, and the power of regulating commerce.

§ 1065. Nor can any power be inferred in the states to regulate commerce from other clauses in the constitution, or the acknowledged rights exercised by the states. The constitution has prohibited the states from laying any impost or duty on imports or exports; but this does not admit, that the state might otherwise have exercised the power, as a regulation of commerce. The laying of such imposts and duties may be, and indeed often is used, as a mere regulation of commerce, by governments possessing that power. But the laying of such imposts and duties is as certainly, and more usually, a right exercised as a part of the power to lay taxes; and with this latter power the states are clearly entrusted. So, that the prohibition is an exception from the acknowledged powder of the state to lay taxes, and not from the questionable power to regulate commerce. Indeed, the constitution treats these as distinct and independent powers. The same remarks apply to a duty on tonnage.

§ 1066. Nor do the acknowledged powers of the states over certain subjects, having a connection with