Export clause

The constitutional provision that 'no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state' is designed to give immunity from taxation to property that is in the actual course of such exportation. This constitutional freedom, however, plainly involves more than mere exemption from taxes or duties which are laid specifically upon the goods themselves. If it meant no more than that, the obstructions to exportation which it was the purpose to prevent could readily be set up by legislation nominally conforming to the constitutional restriction, but in effect overriding it. It was the clear intent of the framers of the Constitution that the process of exporting the products of a state, the goods, chattels, and property of the people of the several states, should not be obstructed or hindered by any burden of taxation.