Commerce includes navigation of the water, and, where this navigation is for the transportation of persons or goods to or from foreign countries or among the States, it is brought within the authority given to the Federal Government by the commerce clause.8 This was established once for all in Gibbons v. Ogden.0

In that famous case, Marshall says: "The subject to be regulated is commerce. . . . The counsel for the appellee would limit it to traffic, to buying and selling, or the interchange of commodities, and do not admit that it comprehends navigation. This would restrict a general term applicable to many objects, to one of its significations. Commerce, undoubtedly, is traffic, but it is some-thing more;,it is intercourse. It describes commercial intercourse between nations and parts of nations, in all its branches, and is regulated by prescribing rules for carrying on that intercourse. The mind can scarcely conceive a system for regulating commerce between nations, which shall exclude all laws concerning navigation, which shall be silent on the admission of the vessels of one nation into the ports of the other, and be confined to prescribing rules for the conduct of individuals in the actual employment of buying and selling, or of barter. . . . The word used in the Constitution, then, comprehends, and has been always understood to comprehend, navigation within its meaning; and a power to regulate navigation is as expressly granted as if that term had been added to the word 'commerce.' " 10

8 The authority of the Federal Government derived from the grant to it of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction is broader than this, extending as it does to all the public navigable waters whether wholly within or between the States. See Chapter LV (Admiralty And Maritime Jurisdiction. 637. Admiralty And Maritime Jurisdiction Defined).

9 9 Wh. l; 6 L. ed 23.