ributed to acquire. In our contemplation,
Carolina and Ohio are parts of the same country; States, united under
the same general government, having interests, common, associated,
intermingled. In whatever is within the proper sphere of the
constitutional power of this government, we look upon the States as one.
We do not impose geographical limits to our patriotic feeling or regard;
we do not follow rivers and mountains, and lines of latitude, to find
boundaries, beyond which public improvements do not benefit us. We who
come here, as agents and representatives of these narrow-minded and
selfish men of New England, consider ourselves as bound to regard with
an equal eye the good of the whole, in whatever is within our powers of
legislation. Sir, if a railroad or canal, beginning in South Carolina
and ending in South Carolina, appeared to me to be of national
importance and national magnitude, believing, as I do, that the power of
government extends to the encouragement of works of that description, if
I were to stand up here and ask, What interest has Massachusetts in a
railroad in South Carolina? I should not be willing to face my
constituents. These same narrow-minded men would tell me, that they had
sent me to act for the whole country, and that one who possessed too
little comprehension, either of intellect or feeling, one who was not
large enough, both in mind and in heart, to embrace the whole, was not
fit to be intrusted with the interest of any part.

Sir, I do not desire to enlarge the powers of the government by
unjustifiable construction, nor to exercise any not within a fair
interpretation. But when it is believed that a power does exist, then it
is, in my judgment, to be exercised for the general benefit of the
whole. So far as respects the exercise of such a power, the States are
one. It was the very object of the Constitution to create unity of
interests to the extent of the powers of the general government. In war
and peace we are one; in commerce, one; because the authority of the
general government reaches to war and peace, and to the regulation of
commerce. I have never seen any more difficulty in erecting light-houses
on the lakes, than on the ocean; in improving the harbors of inland
seas, than if they were within the ebb and flow of the tide; or in
removing obstructions in the vast streams of the West, more than in any
work to facilitate commerce on the Atlantic coast. If there be any power
for one