of the States, and obtaining jurisdiction over it.
At length, after the lapse of thirty-three years, an act is passed
providing for the examination of certain obstructions at the mouth of
one or two harbors almost unknown. It is followed by acts making small
appropriations for the removal of those obstructions. The obstacles
interposed by President Monroe, after conceding the power to
appropriate, were soon swept away. 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. If it may make a road
upon the soil of the States, it may protect it from destruction or
injury by penal laws. So of canals, rivers, and harbors. If it may put
a dam in a river, it may protect that dam from removal or injury, in
direct opposition to the laws, authorities, and people of the State in
which it is situated. If it may deepen a harbor, it may by its own laws
protect its agents, and contractors from being driven from their work
even by the laws and authorities of the State. The power to make a road
or canal or to dig up the bottom of a harbor or river implies a right in
the soil of the State and a jurisdiction over it, for which it would be
impossible to find any warrant.

The States were particularly jealous of conceding to the General
Government any right of jurisdiction over their soil, and in the
Constitution restricted the exclusive legislation of Congress to such
places as might be "purchased with the consent of the States in which
the s