are proposed to be appropriated
toward improving the harbor of Richmond, in the State of Virginia. Such
improvement would furnish advantages to the city of Richmond and add to
the value of the property of its citizens, while it might have a most
disastrous influence over the wealth and prosperity of Petersburg, which
is situated some 25 miles distant on a branch of James River, and which
now enjoys its fair portion of the trade. So, too, the improvement of
James River to Richmond and of the Appomattox to Petersburg might, by
inviting the trade to those two towns, have the effect of prostrating
the town of Norfolk. This, too, might be accomplished without adding a
single vessel to the number now engaged in the trade of the Chesapeake
Bay or bringing into the Treasury a dollar of additional revenue. It
would produce, most probably, the single effect of concentrating the
commerce now profitably enjoyed by three places upon one of them. This
case furnishes an apt illustration of the effect of this bill in several
other particulars.

There can not, in fact, be drawn the slightest discrimination between
the improving the streams of a State under the power to regulate
commerce and the most extended system of internal improvements on land.
The excavating a canal and paving a road are equally as much incidents
to such claim of power as the removing obstructions from water courses;
nor can such power be restricted by any fair course of reasoning to the
mere fact of making the improvement. It reasonably extends also to the
right of seeking a return of the means expended through the exaction of
tolls and the levying of contributions. Thus, while the Constitution
denies to this Government the privilege of acquiring a property in the
soil of any State, even for the purpose of erecting a necessary
fortification, without a grant from such State, this claim to power
would invest it with control and dominion over the waters and soil of
each State without restriction. Power so incongruous can not exist in
the same instrument.

The bill is also liable to a serious objection because of its blending
appropriations for numerous objects but few of which agree in their
general features. This necessarily produces the effect of embarrassing
Executive action. Some of the appropriations would receive my sanction
if separated from the rest, however much I might deplore the
reproduction of a system which for some time past has been permitted
to sl