t
companies to a great extent, and the residue was principally for the
direct construction of roads by this Government, in addition to these
projects, which had been presented to the two Houses under the sanction
and recommendation of their respective Committees on Internal
Improvements, there were then still pending before the committees and in
memorials to Congress presented but not referred different projects for
works of a similar character, the expense of which can not be estimated
with certainty, but must have exceeded $100,000,000.

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.

How forcibly does the history of this subject illustrate the tendency of
power to concentration in the hands of the General Government. The power
to improve their own harbors and rivers was clearly reserved to the
States, who were to be aided by tonnage duties levied and collected by
themselves, with the consent of Congress. For thirty-four years
improvements were carried on under that system, and so careful was
Congress not to interfere, under any implied power, with the soil or
jurisdiction of the States that they did not even assume the power to
erect lighthouses or build piers without first purchasing the ground,
with the consent