is
territory, and embrace all these vast interests. We have a maritime
frontier, a sea-coast of many thousand miles; and while no one doubts
that it is the duty of government to defend this coast by suitable
military preparations, there are those who yet suppose that the powers
of government stop at this point; and that as to works of peace and
works of improvement, they are beyond our constitutional limits. I have
ever thought otherwise. Congress has a right, no doubt, to declare war,
and to provide armies and navies; and it has necessarily the right to
build fortifications and batteries, to protect the coast from the
effects of war. But Congress has authority also, and it is its duty, to
regulate commerce, and it has the whole power of collecting duties on
imports and tonnage. It must have ports and harbors, and dock-yards
also, for its navies. Very early in the history of the government, it
was decided by Congress, on the report of a highly respectable
committee, that the transfer by the States to Congress of the power of
collecting tonnage and other duties, and the grant of the authority to
regulate commerce, charged Congress, necessarily, with the duty of
maintaining such piers and wharves and lighthouses, and of making such
improvements, as might have been expected to be done by the States, if
they had retained the usual means, by retaining the power of collecting
duties on imports. The States, it was admitted, had parted with this
power; and the duty of protecting and facilitating commerce by these
means had passed, along with this power, into other hands. I have never
hesitated, therefore, when the state of the treasury would admit, to
vote for reasonable appropriations, for breakwaters, lighthouses, piers,
harbors, and similar public works, on any part of the whole Atlantic
coast or the Gulf of Mexico, from Maine to Louisiana.

But how stands the inland frontier? How is it along the vast lakes and
the mighty rivers of the North and West? Do our constitutional rights
and duties terminate where the water ceases to be salt? or do they
exist, in full vigor, on the shores of these inland seas? I never could
doubt about this; and yet, Gentlemen, I remember even to have
participated in a warm debate, in the Senate, some years ago, upon the
constitutional right of Congress to make an appropriation for a pier in
the harbor of Buffalo. What! make a harbor at Buffalo, where Nature
never made any, and where therefore it wa