rs of his age, or of any age. It is no disparagement to
Mr. Polk, nor indeed to any one who devotes much time to politics, to
be placed far behind Chancellor Kent as a lawyer. His attitude was most
favorable to correct conclusions. He wrote coolly, and in retirement. He
was struggling to rear a durable monument of fame; and he well knew that
truth and thoroughly sound reasoning were the only sure foundations. Can
the party opinion of a party President on a law question, as this purely
is, be at all compared or set in opposition to that of such a man, in
such an attitude, as Chancellor Kent? This constitutional question will
probably never be better settled than it is, until it shall pass under
judicial consideration; but I do think no man who is clear on the
questions of expediency need feel his conscience much pricked upon this.

Mr. Chairman, the President seems to think that enough may be done, in
the way of improvements, by means of tonnage duties under State authority,
with the consent of the General Government. Now I suppose this matter
of tonnage duties is well enough in its own sphere. I suppose it may be
efficient, and perhaps sufficient, to make slight improvements and repairs
in harbors already in use and not much out of repair. But if I have any
correct general idea of it, it must be wholly inefficient for any general
beneficent purposes of improvement. I know very little, or rather nothing
at all, of the practical matter of levying and collecting tonnage
duties; but I suppose one of its principles must be to lay a duty for the
improvement of any particular harbor upon the tonnage coming into that
harbor; to do otherwise--to collect money in one harbor, to be expended
on improvements in another--would be an extremely aggravated form of that
inequality which the President so much deprecates. If I be right in this,
how could we make any entirely new improvement by means of tonnage duties?
How make a road, a canal, or clear a greatly obstructed river? The idea
that we could involves the same absurdity as the Irish bull about the new
boots. "I shall niver git 'em on," says Patrick, "till I wear 'em a day
or two, and stretch 'em a little." We shall never make a canal by tonnage
duties until it shall already have been made awhile, so the tonnage can
get into it.

After all, the President concludes that possibly there may be some great
objects of improvement which cannot be effected by tonnage duties, and
which it