Congress virtually assumed
jurisdiction of the soil and waters of the States, without their
consent, for the purposes of internal improvement, and the eyes of eager
millions were turned from the State governments to Congress as the
fountain whose golden streams were to deepen their harbors and rivers,
level their mountains, and fill their valleys with canals. To what
consequences this assumption of power was rapidly leading is shown by
the veto messages of President Jackson, and to what end it is again
tending is witnessed by the provisions of this bill and bills of similar
character.
In the proceedings and debates of the General Convention which formed
the Constitution and of the State conventions which adopted it nothing
is found to countenance the idea that the one intended to propose or the
others to concede such a grant of power to the General Government as the
building up and maintaining of a system of internal improvements within
the States necessarily implies. Whatever the General Government may
constitutionally create, it may lawfully protect.
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