It will be found that many of
these works are new, and at places for the improvement of which
appropriations are now for the first time proposed. It will be found
also that the bill contains appropriations for rivers upon which there
not only exists no foreign commerce, but upon which there has not been
established even a paper port of entry, and for the mouths of creeks,
denominated harbors, which if improved can benefit only the particular
neighborhood in which they are situated. It will be found, too, to
contain appropriations the expenditure of which will only have the
effect of improving one place at the expense of the local natural
advantages of another in its vicinity. Should this bill become a law,
the same _principle_ which authorizes the appropriations which it
proposes to make would also authorize similar appropriations for the
improvement of all the other bays, inlets, and creeks, which may with
equal propriety be called harbors, and of all the rivers, important or
unimportant, in every part of the Union. To sanction the bill with such
provisions would be to concede the _principle_ that the Federal
Government possesses the power to expend the public money in a general
system of internal improvements, limited in its extent only by the
ever-varying discretion of successive Congresses and successive
Executives.
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