the abstractions, and yet what a monstrous
inequality in the prices! Does the President, for this reason, propose to
abolish the Presidency? He does not, and he ought not. The true rule, in
determining to embrace or reject anything, is not whether it have any evil
in it, but whether it have more of evil than of good. There are few things
wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of government
policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment
of the preponderance between them is continually demanded. On this
principle the President, his friends, and the world generally act on
most subjects. Why not apply it, then, upon this question? Why, as to
improvements, magnify the evil, and stoutly refuse to see any good in
them?

Mr. Chairman, on the third position of the message the constitutional
question--I have not much to say. Being the man I am, and speaking, where
I do, I feel that in any attempt at an original constitutional argument
I should not be and ought not to be listened to patiently. The ablest and
the best of men have gone over the whole ground long ago. I shall attempt
but little more than a brief notice of what some of them have said. In
relation to Mr. Jefferson's views, I read from Mr. Polk's veto message:

"President Jefferson, in his message to Congress in 1806, recommended an
amendment of the Constitution, with a view to apply an anticipated surplus
in the treasury 'to the great purposes of the public education, roads,
rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may
be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of the federal
powers'; and he adds: 'I suppose an amendment to the Constitution, by
consent of the States, necessary, because the objects now recommended are
not among those enumerated in the Constitution, and to which it permits
the public moneys to be applied.' In 1825, he repeated in his published
letters the opinion that no such power has been conferred upon Congress."

I introduce this not to controvert just now the constitutional opinion,
but to show that, on the question of expediency, Mr. Jefferson's opinion
was against the present President; that this opinion of Mr. Jefferson,
in one branch at least, is in the hands of Mr. Polk like McFingal's
gun--"bears wide and kicks the owner over."

But to the constitutional question. In 1826 Chancellor Kent first
published his Commentaries on American law. He devoted a portio