This recognition of an "exclusively internal" commerce of a State ("intrastate commerce" today) appears at times to have been regarded as implying the existence of an area of State power which Congress was not entitled constitutionally to enter.[326] This inference overlooked the fact that, in consequence of its powers under the necessary and proper clause, Congress can, as Marshall indicates in the words above quoted, interfere with the completely internal concerns of a State "for the purpose of executing its general powers," one of which is its power over foreign and interstate commerce. It is today established doctrine that "no form of State activity can constitutionally thwart the regulatory power granted by the commerce clause to Congress."[327] And while the word "among" serves to demark "the completely internal" commerce of a State from that which "extends to or affects" other States, it also serves, as Marshall further pointed out, to emphasize the fact that "the power of Congress does not stop at the jurisdictional lines of the several States," but "must be exercised whenever [wherever?] the subject exists. * * * Commerce among the States must, of necessity, be commerce [within?] the States. * * * The power of Congress, then, whatever it may be, must be exercised within the territorial jurisdiction of the several States."[328] "REGULATE" Elucidating this word in his opinion for the Court in Gibbons _v._ Ogden, Chief Justice Marshall said: "We are now arrived at the inquiry--What is this power? It is the power to regulate; that is, to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed. This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations, other than are prescribed in the Constitution. These are expressed in plain terms, and do not affect the questions which arise in this case, or which have been discussed at the bar. If, as has always been understood, the sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specified objects, is plenary as to those objects, the power over commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, is vested in Congress as absolutely as it would be in a single government, having in its constitution the same restrictions on the exercise of the power as are found in the Constitution of the United States. The wisdom and the discretion of Congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at elections, are, in this, as in many other instances, as that, for example, of declaring war, the sole restraints on which they have relied, to secure them from its abuse. They are the restraints on which the people must often rely solely, in all representative governments."[329] INTERSTATE VERSUS FOREIGN COMMERCE