According to this opinion of the court, congress has--subject to the exceptions referred to--absolute, irresponsible dominion over "all commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States"; and all men's natural rights to trade with each other, among the several States, and all over the world, are prostrate under the feet of a contemptible, detestable, and irresponsible cabal of lawmakers; and the people have no protection or redress for any tyranny or robbery that may be practised upon them, except _"the wisdom and the discretion of congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at elections"!_ It will be noticed that the court say that _"all the other powers, vested in congress, are complete in themselves, and may be exercised to their utmost extent, and acknowledge no limitations, other than those prescribed by the constitution."_ They say that among "all the other [practically unlimited] powers, vested in congress," is the power "of declaring war"; and, of course, of carrying on war; that congress has power to carry on war, for any reason, to any extent, and against any people, it pleases. Thus they say, virtually, that _the natural rights of mankind_ impose no _constitutional_ restraints whatever upon congress, in the exercise of their lawmaking powers. Is not this asserting that governments have all power, and the people no rights? But what is to be particularly noticed, is the fact that Marshall gives to congress all this practically unlimited power over all "commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States," _solely on the strength of a false definition of the verb "to regulate_." He says that "the power to regulate commerce" is the power "_to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed_." This definition is an utterly false, absurd, and atrocious one. It would give congress power arbitrarily to control, obstruct, impede, derange, prohibit, and destroy commerce. The verb "to regulate" does not, as Marshall asserts, imply the exercise of any arbitrary control whatever over the thing regulated; nor any power "to prescribe [arbitrarily] the rule, by which" the thing regulated "is to be governed." On the contrary, it comes from the Latin word, _regula_, a rule; _and implies the pre-existence of a rule, to which the thing regulated is made to conform_. To regulate one's diet, for example, is not, on the one hand, to starve one's self to emaciation, nor, on the other, to gorge one's self with all sorts of indigestible and hurtful substances, in disregard of the natural laws of health. But it supposes the pre-existence of the _natural laws of health_, to which the diet is made to conform.