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.'i. historical context. Much of the reasoning in Sporhase is of course in dialogu with . previous case law on the subject. When one peruses that case law, one is met not infrequently by sharp invocations of basic principles, essential values, and the lik~ The reason for this is that the concerns represented by the Commerce Clause not only b came part of the Constitution, but indeed, can be said to have been its leading cause. See Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1,223-26. 1 In 1785, delegations from Virginia and Maryland convened at Mount Ver on to fashion a compact governing use of the Potomac and Pocomoke rivers. Once ther , both delegations found themselves agreeing to provisions which went far beyond their commissions. Extravagant as these agreements may have been, they were dee ,ed so sensible by their respective state legislatures that they were adopted and ratified. Bruce Ackerman & Neal Katyal, Our Unconventional Founding, 62 U.Chi. L. Rev. 47 , 492 (1995). ] James Madison had been behind the Mount Vernon Conference, id., d it appears that from it, he drew the lesson that one could go to such a meeting, eng ge in activities well beyond its official parameters, and still have the results accepted if they seemed beneficial. ld. Small wonder, then, that he next put his efforts behind other conference to smooth out trade relationships between states. In 1786, he became p of a conference at Annapolis whose purpose was to recommend to the Confed ration Congress a plan for regulating interstate commerce. ld. at 493. See EEOC v. Wy ming, 460 U.S. 226, 245 (1983) (quoting W. RUTLEDGE, A DECLARTION OF LEGAL AITH 25-26 (1947)). The Annapolis Conference was a mixed success, at best. Acker an & . Katyal, Our Unconventional Founding at 494-96. However, it did result in a call or yet another conference - this time in Philadelphia. ld. at 496. The latter, of course, b came the Constitutional Convention, which produced the Constitution and the Com erce Clause contained within it. That the Constitution thus contained the Commerce Clause was no accide t, for the Constitutional Convention and the conferences leading up to it had, as just sug ested, been significantly motivated by dissatisfaction with trade under the Articles of Confederation. Indeed, the difficulties of getting thirteen, very independently-minded, former colonies to trade fairly with one another had been anticipated even at the ou set of the Revolutionary War. In 1776, Thomas Paine had written: Youth is the seed-time of good habits, as well in nations as in individuals. It might be difficult, if not impossible, to form the Continent into one government half a century hence. The vast variety of interests, occasioned by an increase of trade and population, would create confusion. Colony would be against colony. Each being able might scorn each other's assistance: and while the proud and foolish gloried in their little I Besides going beyond the delegates' commissions, the agreements probably stood in violation oft e Articles of Confederation, which forbade alliances or treaties between the states without congressional permission. See id. 492, 494 n. 53. . 2