elop the country, and
particularly the West, by building highways, dredging rivers, and
deepening harbors, did not diminish, and he made more than one effort
to bring design and system into that legislation. Always mindful of
results, he pointed out that the conditions under which the river and
harbor bills were framed,--the pressure upon every representative and
senator to stand up for the interests of his constituents, and the
failure to fix anywhere the responsibility for a general plan,--made it
inevitable that such measures would either fail to pass or fail of their
objects if they did pass. He suggested, in 1852, a plan which a year or
two later, in a long letter to Governor Matteson, of Illinois, he
explained and advocated with much force. It was for Congress to consent,
as the Constitution provided it might, and as in particular cases it had
consented, to the imposition by the States of tonnage duties, the
proceeds to be used in deepening harbors. The scheme commended itself
for many practical reasons; and it was more consonant with Democratic
theory than the practice of direct appropriations by Congress.

However, in his ardent advocacy of a Pacific railroad, Douglas made no
question of the government's powers in that connection. True, in 1858,
the committee of which he was a member threw the bill into the form of a
mail contract in order that it might not run counter to the state-rights
views of senators, but he seems to have favored every one of the
numerous measures looking to the building of the road which had any
prospect of success. At first, he was for three different roads, a
northern, a central, and a southern, but it was soon clear that Congress
would not go into the matter on so generous a scale. Arguing, then, for
a central line, he used a language characteristic of his course on all
questions that arose between the sections. "The North," he said, "by
bending a little down South, can join it; and the South, by leaning a
little to the North, can unite with it, too; and our Southern friends
ought to be able to bend and lean a little, as well as to require us to
bend and lean all the time, in order to join them."

His practical instinct and his democratic inclinations were both
apparent in the plan which he proposed in 1855 for the relief of the
Supreme Court. A bill reported by the Committee on the Judiciary freed
the justices from their duties on circuit and provided for eleven
circuit judges. Dougl