70 COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES, 



entered into and formed part of every transaction on the subject, 

 and deprived the mere sale or exchange of these articles of that ele- 

 ment of freedom of contract and of full ownership which is an essen- 

 tial attribute of commerce. Passing, however, as we do, the decision 

 of this question, and granting that the dealing in game killed within 

 the State, under the provision in question, created internal State 

 commerce, it does not follow that such internal commerce becomes 

 necessarily the subject-matter of interstate commerce, and therefore 

 under the control of the Constitution of the United States. The 

 distinction between internal and external commerce and interstate 

 commerce is marked, and has always been recognized by this court. In 

 Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat, 1, 194, Mr. Chief Justice Marshall said: 



" 'It is not intended to say that these words comprehend that 

 commerce, which is completely internal, which is carried on between 

 man and man in a State, or between different parts of the same State, 

 and which does not extend to or affect other States. Such a power 

 would be inconvenient and certainly unnecessary. 



" 'Comprehensive as the word 'among' is, it may very properly 

 be restricted to that commerce which concerns more States than one. 

 The phrase is not one which would probably have been selected to indi- 

 cate the completely interior traffic of a State, because it is not an apt 

 phrase for that purpose ; and the enumeration of the particular classes 

 of commerce to which the power was to be extended would not have 

 been made, had the intention been to extend the power to every 

 description. The enumeration presupposes something not enumer- 

 ated; and that something, if we regard the language or the subject of 

 the sentence, must be the exclusively internal commerce of the State. 

 The genius and character of the whole government seem to be that 

 its action is to be applied to all the external concerns of the nation, 

 to those internal concerns which affect the States generally, but not to 

 those which are completely within a particular State, which do not 

 affect other States, and with which it is not necessary to interfere, for 

 the purpose of executing some of the general powers of the govern- 

 ment. The completely internal commerce of a State, then, may be 

 considered as reserved for the State itself.' 



