If one State imposed high duties on the goods or vessels of a
foreign power to countervail the regulations of such power, the next
adjoining States imposed lighter duties to invite those articles into
their ports, that they might be transferred thence into the other
States, securing the duties to themselves. This contracted policy in
some of the States was soon counteracted by others. Restraints were
immediately laid on such commerce by the suffering States; and thus had
grown up a state of affairs disorderly and unnatural, the tendency of
which was to destroy the Union itself and with it all hope of realizing
those blessings which we had anticipated from the glorious Revolution
which had been so recently achieved. From this deplorable dilemma, or,
rather, certain ruin, we were happily rescued by the adoption of the
Constitution.
Among the first and most important effects of this great Revolution
was the complete abolition of this pernicious policy. The States
were brought together by the Constitution, as to commerce, into one
community, equally in regard to foreign nations and each other.
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