Excerpt from An Introduction to the Constitutional Law of the United States: Especially Designed for Students, General and Professional IN preparing the work of which the third edition is now offered to the public, the principal purpose of the author was to furnish for general readers, for colleges, law schools, and other higher seminaries, and for the legal profession, 'a book adapted to their present wants and based upon the principles of constitutional interpretation which have been settled by the civil war and by the political events that followed it. Although, as the name indicates, it is an Introduction and does not purport to be an absolutely exhaustive treatise, yet all the purely constitutional questions which have at any time been passed upon by the highest national tribunal, are discussed and the results thereof are stated. In respect to some of these topics, where there has been a conflict of opinion between the federal and the state courts, or where the relative powers of the national and state governments have been somewhat undefined and uncertain, the treatment has been designedly made more full and minute. Among the more important of these topics are the powers of taxing and of regulating commerce, the mil itary powers, the executive powers, the rights of citizenship, and state laws impairing the obligation of contracts. The work is thus intended for use as a text-book by the courts and the bar. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.