th foreign nations"--and commerce is a term which has many
meanings--as well as "to define and punish offences against the law of
nations" and to "make all laws which shall be necessary for carrying
into execution the foregoing powers." The President is invested with the
power, "by and with the advice of the Senate, to make treaties," and he
is charged with the duty of taking "care that the laws be faithfully
executed." It would seem that among these provisions there is specific
authority enough to cover the case, if the will to use that authority be
there. And I believe that in a large majority of the people the will is
there.

It would appear to be competent for Congress to "define" any failure on
the part of the citizens of any State to comply with whatever
requirements in the treatment of foreigners may be imposed on them by a
treaty into which the nation has entered, as an "offence against the law
of nations." This power of "definition" on the part of Congress is quite
unhampered. So also is the power "to make all laws which shall be
necessary and proper for carrying into execution" the powers of
definition and punishment. And it would be the duty of the President and
the Federal Courts to take care that the laws were executed.

If there would be any "usurpation" involved in such an interpretation of
the phrases of the Constitution it is certainly less--much less, when
regard is had to the intention of the framers of the Constitution--than
other "usurpations" which have been effected, and sometimes without
protest from the individual States; as, for instance, by the expansion
of the right to regulate commerce between the several States into an
authority to deal with all manner of details of the control of railways
of which the framers of the Constitution never contemplated the
existence. It cannot even remotely be compared with such an extension of
the Federal power as would be involved in the translation of the
authority to "establish post-offices and post-roads" as empowering the
government to take an even larger measure of control over those
railroads than can be compassed under the right to regulate commerce--a
translation which seems to have the approval of President Roosevelt.

Incidentally it may be remarked that it would be peculiarly interesting
if, at this day, that authority to construct post-roads should thus be
invoked to give the General Government new powers of wide scope, when we
remember that it