the ocean or the Lakes, not
a river, creek, or streamlet within the States, which is not brought for
this purpose within the power and jurisdiction of the General
Government.

Speculation, disguised under the cloak of public good, will call on
Congress to deepen shallow inlets, that it may build up new cities on
their shores, or to make streams navigable which nature has closed by
bars and rapids, that it may sell at a profit its lands upon their
banks. To enrich neighborhoods by spending within them the moneys of the
nation will be the aim and boast of those who prize their local
interests above the good of the nation, and millions upon millions will
be abstracted by tariffs and taxes from the earnings of the whole people
to foster speculation and subserve the objects of private ambition.

Such a system could not be administered with any approach to equality
among the several States and sections of the Union. There is no equality
among them in the objects of expenditure, and if the funds were
distributed according to the merits of those objects some would be
enriched at the expense of their neighbors. But a greater practical evil
would be found in the art and industry by which appropriations would be
sought and obtained. The most artful and industrious would be the most
successful. The true interests of the country would be lost sight of in
an annual scramble for the contents of the Treasury, and the Member of
Congress who could procure the largest appropriations to be expended in
his district would claim the reward of victory from his enriched
constituents. The necessary consequence would be sectional discontents
and heartburnings, increased taxation, and a national debt never to be
extinguished.

In view of these portentous consequences, I can not but think that this
course of legislation should be arrested, even were there nothing to
forbid it in the fundamental laws of our Union. This conclusion is
fortified by the fact that the Constitution itself indicates a process
by which harbors and rivers within the States may be improved--a process
not susceptible of the abuses necessarily to flow from the assumption of
the power to improve them by the General Government, just in its
operation, and actually practiced upon, without complaint or
interruption, during more than thirty years from the organization of the
present Government.

The Constitution provides that "no State shall, without the consent of
Congress, la