Contingent expenses.

For compensation to the following in the office of the President of the United States: Secretary, five thousand dollars, two assistant secretaries, at three thousand dollars each; executive clerk, two thousand five hundred; executive clerk and disbursing officer, two thousand dollars; seven clerks at two thousand dollars each; one clerk of class four; one clerk, of class four who shall be a telegrapher; four clerks of class three; one clerk of class two; steward, one thousand eight hundred dollars; chief door keeper, one thousand eight hundred dollars; eight door keepers at one thousand two hundred dollars each; four messengers at one thousand two hundred dollars each; five messengers at nine hundred dollars each; watchman, nine hundred dollars; one fireman, laborer, seven hundred and twenty dollars; laborer, six hundred dollars; in all sixty-six thousand three hundred and forty dollars: Provided, That employees of the Excutive Departments and other establishments of the executive branch of the Government may be detailed from time to time to the office of the President of the United States for such temporary assistance as may be necessary.

For contingent expenses of the Executive Office, including stationery therefor, as well as record books, telegrams, telephones, books for library, furniture and carpets for offices, care of office carriages, horses, and harness, and miscellaneous items, to be expended in the discretion of the President, twenty thousand dollars.

CHAPTER XIX

THE REGULATION OF COMMERCE

143. Constitutional Provisions

THE following clauses of the federal Constitution especially relate to the regulation of commerce by Congress:

The Congress shall have power.

...

to regulate commerce

with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department, or officer thereof. (Art. I, sec. 8.)

No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state. No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one state over those of another; nor shall vessels bound to, or from, one state be obliged to enter, clear, or pay duties in another. (Art. I, sec. 9.)

The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. (Art. IV, sec. 2.)

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (Amendment XIV, sec. 1.)

144. Judicial Interpretation of the Term "Commerce" The first great judicial construction of the term "Commerce" was made in 1824 by Chief Justice Marshall in the case of Gibbons v. Ogden. The opinion rendered on that occasion, from which

Commerce

is more

than traffic; it is intercourse.

Commerce embraces navigation.

only a brief extract can be given here, "is the basis of all subsequent decisions construing the commerce clause, and is the recognized source of authority."

The words are: "Congress shall have power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states and with the Indian tribes." The subject to be regulated is commerce: and our constitution being, as was aptly said at the bar, one of enumeration, and not of definition, to ascertain the extent of the power it becomes necessary to settle the meaning of the word. The counsel for the appellee would limit it to traffic, to buying and selling or the interchange of commodities, and do not admit that it comprehends navigation. This would restrict a general term, applicable to many objects, to one of its significations. Commerce undoubtedly is traffic, but it is something more; it is intercourse. It describes the commercial intercourse between nations, and parts of nations, in all its branches, and is regulated by prescribing rules for carrying on that intercourse. The mind can scarcely conceive a system for regulating commerce between nations, which shall exclude all laws concerning navigation, which shall be silent on the admission of the vessels of the one nation into the ports of the other, and be confined to prescribing rules for the conduct of individuals, in the actual employment of buying and selling, or of barter.

If commerce does not include navigation, the government of the Union has no direct power over that subject, and can make no law prescribing what shall constitute American vessels, or requiring that they shall be navigated by American seamen. Yet this power has been exercised from the commencement of the government, has been exercised with the consent of all, and has been understood by all to be a commercial regulation. All America understands, and has uniformly understood, the word "commerce" to comprehend navigation. It was so understood, and must have been so understood, when the constitution was framed. The power over commerce, including navigation, was one of the primary objects for which the people of America adopted their govern

ment and must have been contemplated in forming it. The convention must have used the word in that sense; because all have understood it in that sense, and the attempt to restrict it comes too late. . .

The universally acknowledged power of the government to impose embargoes, must also be considered as showing that all America is united in that construction which comprehends navigation in the word commerce. Gentlemen have said, in argument, that this is a branch of the war-making power, and that an embargo is an instrument of war, not a regulation of trade. That it may be, and often is, used as an instrument of war cannot be denied. An embargo may be imposed for the purpose of facilitating the equipment or manning of a fleet, or for the purpose of concealing the progress of an expedition preparing to sail from a particular port. In these, and in similar cases, it is a military instrument, and partakes of the nature of war. But all embargoes are not of this description. They are sometimes resorted to without a view to war, and with a single view to commerce. In such a case, an embargo is no more a war measure than a merchantman is a ship of war, because both are vessels which navigate the ocean with sails and seamen. When Congress imposed that embargo which, for a time, engaged the attention of every man in the United States, the avowed object of the law was the protection of commerce, and the avoiding of war. By its friends and its enemies it was treated as a commercial, not as a war measure. The word used in the constitution, then, comprehends, and has been always understood to comprehend, navigation within its meaning; and a power to regulate navigation is as expressly granted as if that term had been added to the word "commerce."

...

The power to lay

embargoes.

To what commerce does this power extend? The constitution Every species of informs us, to commerce "with foreign nations, and among the commercial several states, and with the Indian tribes." It has, we believe, intercourse been universally admitted that these words comprehend every species of commercial intercourse between the United States and foreign nations. No sort of trade can be carried on between this

embraced.

The term "among" considered.

Traffic wholly

within a state not included.

country and any other, to which this power does not extend. It has been truly said, that commerce, as the word is used in the constitution, is a unit, every part of which is indicated by the term. If this be the admitted meaning of the word, in its application to foreign nations, it must carry the same meaning throughout the sentence, and remain a unit, unless there be some plain intelligible cause which alters it.

The subject to which the power is next applied, is to commerce "among the several states." The word "among” means intermingled with. A thing which is among others is intermingled with them. Commerce among the states cannot stop at the external boundary line of each state, but may be introduced into the interior.

one.

It is not intended to say that these words comprehend that commerce which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and man in a state, or between different parts of the same state, and which does not extend to or affect other states. Such a power would be inconvenient and is certainly unnecessary. Comprehensive as the word "among" is, it may very properly be restricted to that commerce which concerns more states than The phrase is not one which would probably have been selected to indicate the completely interior traffic of a state, because it is not an apt phrase for that purpose; and the enumeration of the particular classes of commerce to which the power was to be extended, would not have been made had the intention been to extend the power to every description. . . . The genius and character of the whole government seem to be, that its action is to be applied to all the external concerns of the nation, and to those internal concerns which affect the states generally; but not to those which are completely within a particular state, which do not affect other states, and with which it is not necessary to interfere, for the purpose of executing some of the general powers of the government. The completely internal commerce of a state, then, may be considered as reserved for the state itself.

But, in regulating commerce with foreign nations, the power