The bill proposes to appropriate $1,378,450 to be
applied to more than forty distinct and separate objects of improvement.
On examining its provisions and the variety of objects of improvement
which it embraces, many of them of a local character, it is difficult to
conceive, if it shall be sanctioned and become a law, what practical
constitutional restraint can hereafter be imposed upon the most extended
system of internal improvements by the Federal Government in all parts
of the Union. The Constitution has not, in my judgment, conferred upon
the Federal Government the power to construct works of internal
improvement within the States, or to appropriate money from the Treasury
for that purpose. That this bill assumes for the Federal Government the
right to exercise this power can not, I think, be doubted. The approved
course of the Government and the deliberately expressed judgment of the
people have denied the existence of such a power under the Constitution.
Several of my predecessors have denied its existence in the most solemn
forms.
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