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To: Rockingham
I have in mind the muti-volume "The Founders' Constitution," contemporary American legal authorities such as Blackstone and Kent and American dictionaries like the early Websters.

Those are definitely good references as well. I don't know if you're aware of this, but the Founders' Constitution can be perused in an indexed online version. One page on that site that might be of interest is Marshall's opinion in Gibbons vs Ogden. About a quarter of the way down, he says, "But it has been urged with great earnestness, that, although the power of Congress to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, be co-extensive with the subject itself, and have no other limits than are prescribed in the constitution, yet the States may severally exercise the same power, within their respective jurisdictions." Just another example of how the word was used that should give a good idea of how it was understood to mean.

Anyway, you still might want to take the OED for a spin when you have the leisure. You'll see what I'm saying about it.

574 posted on 11/07/2005 6:54:54 PM PST by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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To: inquest
Thanks. I was utterly unaware that "The Founders' Constitution" is now available online and am delighted to see that it is so. I was not able to find anything useful to the meaning of "several states" there, but I found an online version of Kent's that shows as a chapter heading "Of Constitutional Restrictions on the Powers of the Several States" (http://www.constitution.org/jk/jk_000.htm). To me, that makes sense only if several means not "interstate" or "between the states" but as reference to the states as a whole, which I what I took Madison's meaning to be.
575 posted on 11/07/2005 7:29:43 PM PST by Rockingham
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