It has often been asserted and apparently is generally believed, that in the lapse of time the limited authority of the United States has been gradually extended, national powers assumed, and the whole fabric of government changed. An examination, however, of the laws passed by the earliest Legislatures shows a very liberal construction of the granted powers. Madison was a leader in the first Congress, he was through life a strict constructionist of the extent of the powers given by the Constitution. He informs us that no one doubted in that Congress that the United States had the power of levying duties for protection.[58] The want of such power was the very ground on which South Carolina passed the nullification acts of 1832. The preamble of the law of the first Congress, stating that the duties laid were for the encouragement and protection of manufactures, we have already cited. The same act made a discrimination in favor of imports of teas from China and India direct in ships belonging to citizens of the United States, allowed a drawback on dried and pickled fish and salted provisions in lieu of a drawback on the salt used in them. In the third session of that first Congress, an excise tax was laid on distilled spirits, and the Bank of the United States was incorporated--because of its utility to the government in the collection and transmitting of its revenue. Carriages were taxed in 1794. To the charter of the bank and the carriage-tax Madison and others objected as not within the granted powers. Also in 1794 sales of wines and liquors by retail and sales by auction were taxed. And Madison himself introduced a bill to make a post-road through the whole length of the States from Maine to Georgia. [58] Madison’s letter to Jos. C. Cabell: Consideration No. 8. 4 Elliot, 602. The suit before referred to against the State of Georgia,[59] under the clause giving the United States Courts jurisdiction between a State and citizens of another State, is another piece of contemporary history and the strongest possible proof what was the understanding of that day. Georgia was sued by a citizen of South Carolina in a simple action of assumpsit, the legal term for a suit in which one would recover for the cost of a pair of shoes or a day’s wages. Georgia refused to defend the claim on the ground that she was a sovereign State. [59] 2 Dallas _Reports_, 419.