fit,
and in addition contributes to the cost of all other harbor and river
improvements in the Union. The facts need but be stated to prove the
inequality and injustice which can not but flow from the practice
embodied in this bill. Either the subject should be left as it was
during the first third of a century, or the practice of levying tonnage
duties by the States should be abandoned altogether and all harbor and
river improvements made under the authority of the United States, and by
means of direct appropriations. In view not only of the constitutional
difficulty, but as a question of policy, I am clearly of opinion that
the whole subject should be left to the States, aided by such tonnage
duties on vessels navigating their waters as their respective
legislatures may think proper to propose and Congress see fit to
sanction. This "consent" of Congress would never be refused in any case
where the duty proposed to be levied by the State was reasonable and
where the object of improvement was one of importance. The funds
required for the improvement of harbors and rivers may be raised in this
mode, as was done in the earlier periods of the Government, and thus
avoid a resort to a strained construction of the Constitution not
warranted by its letter. If direct appropriations be made of the money
in the Federal Treasury for such purposes, the expenditures will be
unequal and unjust. The money in the Federal Treasury is paid by a tax
on the whole people of the United States, and if applied to the purposes
of improving harbors and rivers it will be partially distributed and be
expended for the advantage of particular States, sections, or localities
at the expense of others.

By returning to the early and approved construction of the Constitution
and to the practice under it this inequality and injustice will be
avoided and at the same time all the really important improvements be
made, and, as our experience has proved, be better made and at less cost
than they would be by the agency of officers of the United States. The
interests benefited by these improvements, too, would bear the cost
of making them, upon the same principle that the expenses of the
Post-Office establishment have always been defrayed by those who derive
benefits from it. The power of appropriating money from the Treasury for
such improvements was not claimed or exercised for more than thirty
years after the organization of the Government in 1789, when a m