Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/524

 is to be regarded as an incident to duties imposed for revenue. Such a view of the section is barred by the fact that revenue cannot be the object of the State, the duties accruing, not to the State, but to the United States. The duties also would even diminish, not increase, the gain of the federal treasury, by diminishing the consumption of imports within the States imposing the duties, and, of course, the aggregate revenue of the United States. The revenue, whatever it might be, could only be regarded as an incident to the manfacturing object, not this to the revenue.…

Attempts have been made to show, from the journal of the Convention of 1787, that it was intended to withhold from Congress a power to protect manufactures by commercial regulations. The intention is inferred from the rejection or not adopting of particular propositions which embraced a power to encourage them. But, without knowing the reasons for the votes in those cases, no such inference can be sustained. The propositions might be disapproved because they were in a bad form or not in order; because they blended other powers with the particular power in question; or because the object had been, or would be, elsewhere provided for. No one acquainted with the proceedings of deliberative bodies can have failed to notice the frequent uncertainty of inferences from a record of naked votes. It has been with some surprise, that a failure or final omission of a proposition “to establish public institutions, rewards, and immunities for the promotion of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures,” should have led to the conclusion that the Convention meant to exclude from the federal power over commerce regulations encouraging domestic manufactures. (See Mr. Crawford’s letter to Mr. Dickerson, in the National Intelligencer of ——.) Surely no disregard of a proposition embracing public institutions, rewards, and immunities for the promotion of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, could be an evidence of a refusal to encourage the particular object of manufactures, by the particular mode of duties or restrictions on rival imports. In expounding the Constitution and deducing the intention of its framers, it should never be forgotten, that the great object of the Convention was to provide, by a new Constitution, a remedy for the defects of the existing one; that among these defects was that of a power to regulate foreign commerce; that in all nations this regulating power embraced the protection of domestic manufactures by duties and restrictions on imports; that the States had tried in vain to make use of the power, while it remained with them; and that, if taken from them and transferred to the Federal Government, with an exception of the power to encourage domestic manufactures, the American people, let it