1st. Collectors may refuse permission to put a cargo on board of any ship, vessel, or boat, in any case where they have their own personal suspicions that it is intended for foreign exportation, and in every case which may be comprehended within the scope of any general instructions, issued by command of the President. But there is a proviso as to coasting vessels uniformly employed in the navigation of bays, sounds, rivers, and lakes, which shall have obtained a general permission. 2d. General permissions may be granted to the last-mentioned vessels, under such general instructions as the President of the United States may give, when it can be done without danger of the embargo being violated, to take on board such articles as may be designated in such general permission or permissions. By these general instructions, the President may prescribe the kind and quantity of exports from, and imports into the individual States, and from and to the particular districts within a State. He may suspend them in part or in whole. The power of issuing general instructions now proposed to be given to the President by law, he exercised in the recess of Congress, and in my opinion, without law. The Governor of Massachusetts was authorized to give certificates, or licenses for the importation of flour into that State; and, under general instructions from the President, without personal suspicion of his own, the collector at Charleston, in South Carolina, detained a vessel; which called forth the independent exercise of the judicial power of the circuit court in that State, to control the President's instructions. I am sensible the Administration and its friends have an arduous task in executing the embargo; difficulties beset them on every side; difficulties inherent in the measure itself, and not to be overcome by accumulating rigorous penalties, and an extension of the Executive power. The power to regulate commerce is vested in Congress, and by granting it to the President, do we not transfer to him one of the most important and delicate of the legislative powers? What State would have adopted the constitution, if it had been foreseen that this power would be granted to any man, however distinguished by office? The sections I have considered, principally affect merchants and seafaring men in their business, at stores, custom-houses, about wharves, ships, and vessels. But other sections take a wider range, and intrench on the ordinary concerns of the great body of the people, by the powers they give for unreasonable and arbitrary searches for, and seizures of their property.