e Union to the four winds. Have the gentleman's
State-rights opinions always kept him aloof from such unhallowed
infringements of the Constitution? He says he always differed with me
on constitutional questions. How was it in this most important
particular? Has he here stood on the ramparts, brandishing his
glittering sword against assailants, and holding out a banner of
defiance? Sir, it is an indisputable truth, that he is himself the man,
the _ipse_ that first brought forward in Congress a scheme of general
internal improvement, at the expense and under the authority of this
government. He, Sir, is the very man, the _ipsissimus ipse_, who
considerately, and on a settled system, began these unconstitutional
measures, if they be unconstitutional. And now for the proof.

The act incorporating the Bank of the United States was passed in April,
1816. For the privileges of the charter, the proprietors of the bank
were to pay to government a _bonus_, as it was called, of one million
five hundred thousand dollars, in certain instalments. Government also
took seven millions in the stock of the bank. Early in the next session
of Congress, that is, in December, 1816, the honorable member moved, in
the House of Representatives, that a committee be appointed to consider
the propriety of setting apart this _bonus_, and also the dividends on
the stock belonging to the United States, as a permanent fund for
internal improvement. The committee was appointed, and the honorable
member was made its chairman. He thus originated the plan, and took the
lead in its execution. Shortly afterwards, he reported a bill carrying
out the objects for which the committee had been appointed. This bill
provided that the dividends on the seven millions of bank stock
belonging to government, and also the whole of the _bonus_, should be
permanently pledged as a fund for constructing roads and canals; and
that this fund should be subject to such specific appropriations as
Congress might subsequently make.

This was the bill; and this was the first project ever brought forward
in Congress for a system of internal improvements. The bill goes the
whole doctrine at a single jump. The Cumberland Road, it is true, was
already in progress; and for that the gentleman had also voted. But
there were, and are now, peculiarities about that particular expenditure
which sometimes satisfy scrupulous consciences; but this bill of the
gentleman's, without equivocation or