Mr. HOWE. The Supreme Court said, I repeat, that it was not a lawful structure. The reason why it was not a lawful structure, in their judgment, was precisely what 1!: friendfrom Maine says, because it obstructe a high way, not leading through the State of Pennslylrania, which complained, but lending to teState of Pennsylvania, which complained. That is what gave the State of Pennsylvania a right to redress; the fact that it obstructed commerce moving to and from Pennsylvania. It obstructed the movement of that commerce. So the court said. They said it must be abated. Congress said, in defiance of the legal rights as adjudicated. passed into judgment, of the State of Pennsylvania. “ It is notan unlawful, but a lawful, structure, and shall stand, the judgment of the court to the contrary notwithstanding.” Congress did not authorize the buildin of a bridge. but finding a bridge constructe by a private cororation, without an: thority of law, they sai “ it shall have the authority of law.” Pennsylvania complained. It was the exercise of authority within the lim its of a State the State of Virginia to maintaina bridge which Pennsylvania had not authorized; Virginia attempted to authorize it, but had not the authority to authorize it, simply because it was a wrong to another State. i cannot for my life conceive why that power, which the U.S. exercised in Virginia to the injury of the adjudged rights of Pennsylvania, could not have been just as well exercised in Pennsylvania if the call for its exercise had been made from Pennsylvania. I must insist, therefore, that the court has passed upon and has nifirmed, most substan tially an most clearly, the right of the U.S., if they see fit. to authorize the construction of railways within States in the interests of commerce. Mr. President, if it were not for the peculiar course this debate has taken I think it would be an astounding thing for us to be told that in the face and eyes of the plain constitutional declaration of our right to regulate commerce, a State had been found to assert the right of controlling all the commerce through its limits to go over one channel to the exclusion of an other. I think it would have astonished us to be told that a State had started such an authorit; but it has been asserted, and it is grave y argued that we are bound by it. I hope that will not be the conclusion of the Senate. I do wish that the Congress of the U.S. could be emancipated some time or other from this notion, that not only was it bound by the authority of the people of all the States, but it was bound in every direction by the authority of anyone of the States. I am as strict a constructionist of the Constitution, it seems to me as anybod ought to be; I am as jealous of allowing the Government of the U.S. to interfere in what are the domestic concerns (to use an old fashioned, and, I thank God, an out of fashion form of expression) of a State; that is to say, what concerns its own people its own affairs, and its own prosperity a one. but the commerce which moves between NewYork and Philadelphia is not an affair which concerns the State of ncw Jersey. That is an affair which concerns all the U.S., and concerns vastly more the States of NewYork and Pennsylvania than it does the State of NewJersey. That is not a domestic interest; that is nota domestic concern; that is not a do mestic affair. That is one of the affairs which, as I said in the outset, was the very purpose of adopting this Constitution, in order to place it under the control and under the direction of the U.S.A and if this authority claimed on the part of NewJersey is affirmed any longer by the legislature of the U.S., you have snericed, you have voluntarily abandoned, one of the dearest interests you ever had, or can hope to have. in the Government.