But dicta to the contrary are much more numerous and span a far longer period of time. Thus Chief Justice Taney wrote in 1847: "The power to regulate commerce among the several States is granted to Congress in the same clause, and by the same words, as the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and is coextensive with it."[332] And nearly fifty years later Justice Field, speaking for the Court, said: "The power to regulate commerce among the several States was granted to Congress in terms as absolute as is the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations."[333] Today it is firmly established doctrine that the power to regulate commerce, whether with foreign nations or among the several States comprises the power to restrain or prohibit it at all times for the welfare of the public, provided only the specific limitations imposed upon Congress's powers, as by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, are not transgressed.[334] Nor does the power to regulate commerce stop with, nor in fact is it most commonly exercised in, measures designed to outlaw some branch of commerce. In the words of the Court: It is the power to provide by appropriate legislation for its "protection and advancement";[335] to adopt measures "to promote its growth and insure its safety";[336] "to foster, protect, control and restrain, [commerce]."[337] This protective power has, moreover, two dimensions. In the first place, it includes the power to reach and remove every conceivable obstacle to or restriction upon interstate and foreign commerce from whatever source arising, whether it results from unfavorable conditions within the States or from State legislative policy, like the monopoly involved in Gibbons _v._ Ogden; or from both combined. In the second place, it extends--as does also the power to restrain commerce--to the instruments and agents by which commerce is carried on; nor are such instruments and agents confined to those which were known or in use when the Constitution was adopted.[338] INSTRUMENTS OF COMMERCE