Hamilton was wrong in his prediction as to what men would do, but quite right in foreseeing the consequences of their foolhardiness. Federal intervention in agriculture has, indeed, proved “troublesome.” Disregard of the Constitution in this field has brought about the inevitable loss of personal freedom; and it has created economic chaos. Unmanageable surpluses, an immense tax burden, high consumer prices, vexatious controls--I doubt if the folly of ignoring the principle of limited government has ever been more convincingly demonstrated. We have blundered on so grand a scale that even our critical faculties seem to have been damaged in the process. No man who is familiar with the subject will deny that the policy of price supports and production controls has been a colossal failure. Yet, today, some of our best minds have no better solution to the problem than to raise the supports and increase the controls! The teaching of the Constitution on this matter is perfectly clear. _No power over agriculture was given to any branch of the national government._ The sponsors of the first Agriculture Adjustment Act, passed in 1933, tried to justify the law under the so-called general welfare clause of the Constitution. The Supreme Court promptly struck down that legislation on the grounds that the phrase, “general welfare,” was simply a qualification of the taxing power and did not give Congress the power to _control_ anything. “The regulation (of agricultural production),” the Court said in United States v. Butler (1936) “is not in fact voluntary. The farmer, of course, may refuse to comply [a privilege not given him under present legislation], but the price of such refusal is loss of benefits ... the power to confer or withhold unlimited benefits is the power to coerce or destroy....” The New Deal Congress replied by enacting substantially identical legislation, the second AAA, and now sought to justify the program as a “regulation of interstate commerce.” This was a transparent evasion of the Butler case; but the Supreme Court, which by this time was under heavy political fire for having thwarted the “Roosevelt Revolution,” made one of its celebrated about-faces and upheld the new act. The federal government has usurped many powers under the guise of “regulating commerce,” but this instance of distorting the plain meaning of the Constitution’s language is perhaps the most flagrant on record.