[inquest]

First of all, I'm quite willing to bet that that case was referring to foreign commerce, not interstate commerce. Considering that one of the parties appeared to be a ship, that's a reasonably safe bet.

Secondly, this is what I said: "There isn't a scintilla of evidence from the writings of either federalists or anti-federalists at the time that the purpose of the clause was to give the federal government any restrictive power over actual commercial transactions within the country." Your cite didn't contradict that. All it referred to were the end goals that particular measures were to shoot for, not the nature of those measures themselves.

[tacticalogic]

Something rp omitted from his selected quote from United States vs. The William:

"In illustration of their argument, gentlemen have supposed a strong case; a prohibition of the future cultivation of corn, in the United States. It would not be admitted, I presume, that an act, so extravagant, would be constitutional, though not perpetual, but confined to a single season. And why? Because it would be, most manifestly, without the limits of the federal jurisdiction, and relative to an object, or concern, not committed to its management."