Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/546

 538 more broad in its extent and objects, than the power to encourage manufactures by the exercise of another granted power. It might be contended with quite as much plausibility, that the rejection was an implied rejection of the right to encourage commerce, for that was equally within the scope of the proposition. In truth, it involved a direct power to establish institutions, rewards, and immunities for all the great interests of society, and was, on that account, deemed too broad and sweeping. It would establish a general, and not a limited power of government.

§ 1090. Such is a summary (necessarily imperfect) of the reasoning on each side of this contested doctrine. The reader will draw his own conclusions; and these Commentaries have no further aim, than to put him in possession of the materials for a proper exercise of his judgment.

§ 1091. When the subject of the regulation of commerce was before the convention, the first draft of the constitution contained an article, that "no navigation act shall be passed, without the assent of two thirds of the members present in each house." This article was afterwards recommended in a report of a committee to be stricken out. In the second revised draft it was left out; and a motion, to insert such a restriction to have effect until the year 1808, was negatived by the vote of seven states against three. Another proposition, that no act, regulating the commerce of the United States with foreign powers, should be passed without the assent of two thirds of the