ure; and
having got a "good thing" among them, in process of time it became a
bone of contention, which it still remains: the Whigs contending that
the navigable waters having been declared by the constitution "for ever
free," are national waters, and as such, entitled to have all necessary
improvements made at the expense of the Union; their opponents
asserting, that rivers and harbours are not national, but local, and
that their improvements should be exclusively committed to the
respective States. This latter opinion sounds strange indeed, when it is
remembered that the Mississippi and its tributaries bathe the shores of
some thirteen States, carrying on their bosoms produce annually valued
at 55,000,000l. sterling, of which 500,000l. is utterly destroyed
from the want of any sufficient steps to remove the dangers of
navigation.[AX]

Mr. Ruggles has always been a bold and able advocate of the Whig
doctrine of nationality; and, in a lecture delivered by him upon the
subject, he states that during the recent struggle to pass the River and
Harbour Bill through the Senate, Mr. Douglas, a popular democrat from
Illinois, offered as a substitute an amendment giving the consent of
Congress "to the levy of local tonnage dues, not only by each of the
separate States, but even by the authorities of any city or town." One
can hardly conceive any man of the most ordinary intellect deliberately
proposing to inflict upon his country the curse of an unlimited legion
of custom-houses, arresting commerce in every bend of the river and in
every bay of the sea; yet such was the case, though happily the
proposition was not carried. How inferior does the narrow mind which
made the above proposition in 1848 appear, when placed beside the
prescient mind which in 1787 proposed and carried, "That navigable
waters should be for ever free from any tax or impost whatever!"

One of the most extraordinary instances of routine folly which I ever
read or heard of, and which, among so practical and unroutiney a
people as the Americans, appears all but incredible, is the
following:--Congress having resisted the Harbour Improvement Bill, but
acknowledged its duties as to certain lights and beacons, "Ordered, that
a beacon should be placed on a rock in the harbour of New Haven. The
engineer reported, that the cost of removing the rock would be less than
the cost of erecting the beacon; but the President was firm--a great
party doctrine was involved,