Cite as: 517 U. S. 843 (1996)
Kennedy, J., dissenting
requiring a two-thirds vote of each House failed by the vote of only one State. 2 Farrand, supra, at 363. There is no cause for extending the Export Clause beyond the bargain struck at the Convention and embodied in its text.
There is other compelling historical evidence weighing against Thames & Mersey's view of the Export Clause as a prohibition extending even to taxes on services that have the indirect effect of raising exportation costs. In 1797 the Fifth Congress passed "An Act laying Duties on stamped Vellum, Parchment and Paper." Among its provisions was a stamp duty upon
"any policy of insurance or instrument in nature thereof, whereby any ships, vessels or goods going from one district to another in the United States, or from the United States to any foreign port or place, shall be insured, to wit, if going from one district to another in the United States, twenty-five cents; if going from the United States to any foreign port or place, when the sum for which insurance is made shall not exceed five hundred dollars, twenty-five cents; and when the sum insured shall exceed five hundred dollars, one dollar . . . ." Act of July 6, 1797, ch. 11, § 1, 1 Stat. 527.
The duties survived until the unpopular Federalist tax system, which was felt to bear too heavily upon those least able to pay, was abolished soon after Jefferson took office. See Paul, supra, at 6.
We have always been reluctant to say a statute of this early origin offends the Constitution, absent clear inconsistency. See Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. 41, 56 (1900) (imposition of legacy taxes in the same 1797 statute casts doubt on claim that Congress lacks such power); see Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U. S. 160, 171 (1948) ("The [Alien Enemy Act of 1798] is almost as old as the Constitution, and it would savor of doctrinaire audacity now to find the statute offensive to some emanation of the Bill of Rights"). The 1797
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