Thus, within the brief period of less than ten years after the
commencement of internal improvements by the General Government the sum
asked for from the Treasury for various projects amounted to more than
$200,000,000. President Jackson's powerful and disinterested appeals to
his country appear to have put down forever the assumption of power to
make roads and cut canals, and to have checked the prevalent disposition
to bring all rivers in any degree navigable within the control of the
General Government. But an immense field for expending the public money
and increasing the power and patronage of this Government was left open
in the concession of even a limited power of Congress to improve harbors
and rivers--a field which millions will not fertilize to the
satisfaction of those local and speculating interests by which these
projects are in general gotten up. There can not be a just and equal
distribution of public burdens and benefits under such a system, nor can
the States be relieved from the danger of fatal encroachment, nor the
United States from the equal danger of consolidation, otherwise than by
an arrest of the system and a return to the doctrines and practices
which prevailed during the first thirty years of the Government.
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