Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/66

 58 punish all such offences, which may interrupt our intercourse and harmony with, and our duties to them.

§ 1161. Whether this power, so far as it concerns the law of nations, is an exclusive one, has been doubted by a learned commentator. As, up to the present time, that question may be deemed for most purposes to be a mere speculative question, it is not proposed to discuss it, since it may be better reasoned out, when it shall require judicial decision.

§ 1162. The clause, as it was originally reported in the first draft of the constitution, was in substance, though not in language, as it now stands. It was subsequently amended; and in the second draft stood in its present terms. There is, however, in the Supplement to the Journal, an obscure statement of a question put, to strike out the word "punish," seeming to refer to this clause, which was carried in the affirmative by the vote of six states against five. Yet the constitution itself bears testimony, that it did not prevail.