“The power to regulate commerce among the several States” can not include a power to construct roads and canals and to improve the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and secure such commerce, without a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms, strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.

We know from the history of the Constitution what these inconveniences were.  Different States admitted foreign imports at different rates of duty.  Those which had prescribed a higher rate of duty for the purpose of increasing their revenue were defeated in this object by the legislation of neighboring States admitting the same foreign articles at lower rates.  Hence jealousies and dangerous rivalries had sprung up between the different States.  It was chiefly in the desire to provide a remedy for these evils that the Federal Convention originated.  The Constitution, for this purpose, conferred upon Congress the power to regulate commerce in such a manner that duties should be uniform in all the States composing the Confederacy, and, moreover, expressly provided that “no preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another.”  If the construction of a harbor or deepening the channel of a river be a regulation of commerce, as the advocates of this power contend, this would give the ports of the State within which these improvements were made a preference over the ports of other States, and thus be a violation of the Constitution.

It is not too much to assert that no human being in existence when the Constitution was framed entertained the idea or the apprehension that by conferring upon Congress the power to regulate commerce its framers intended to embrace the power of constructing roads and canals and of creating and improving harbors and deepening the channels of rivers throughout our extensive Confederacy.  Indeed, one important branch of this very power had been denied to Congress in express terms by the Convention.  A proposition was made in the Convention to confer on Congress the power “to provide for the cutting of canals when deemed necessary.”  This was rejected by the strong majority of eight States to three.  Among the reasons given for this rejection was that “the expense in such cases will fall on the United States and the benefits accrue to the places where the canals may be cut.”

To say that the simple power of regulating commerce embraces within itself that of constructing harbors, of deepening the channels of rivers—­in short, of creating a system of internal improvements for the purpose of facilitating the operations of commerce—­would be to adopt a latitude of construction under which all political power might be usurped by the Federal Government.  Such a construction would be in conflict with the well-known