n
every part of the Union in which stages can be preferred the roads are
sufficiently good provided those which serve for every other purpose
will accommodate them. In every other part where horses alone are used
if other people pass them on horseback surely the mail carrier can. For
an object so simple and so easy in its execution it would doubtless
excite surprise if it should be thought proper to appoint commissioners
to lay off the country on a great scheme of improvement, with the
power to shorten distances, reduce heights, level mountains, and pave
surfaces.

If the United States possessed the power contended for under this grant,
might they not in adopting the roads of the individual States for the
carriage of the mail, as has been done, assume jurisdiction over them
and preclude a right to interfere with or alter them? Might they not
establish turnpikes and exercise all the other acts of sovereignty
above stated over such roads necessary to protect them from injury and
defray the expense of repairing them? Surely if the right exists these
consequences necessarily followed as soon as the road was established.
The absurdity of such a pretension must be apparent to all who examine
it. In this way a large portion of the territory of every State might be
taken from it, for there is scarcely a road in any State which will not
be used for the transportation of the mail. A new field for legislation
and internal government would thus be opened.

From this view of the subject I think we may fairly conclude that the
right to adopt and execute a system of internal improvement, or any part
of it, has not been granted to Congress under the power to establish
post-offices and post-roads; that the common roads of the country only
were contemplated by that grant and are fully competent to all its
purposes.

The next object of inquiry is whether the right to declare war
includes the right to adopt and execute this system of improvement.
The objections to it are, I presume, not less conclusive than those
which are applicable to the grant which we have just examined.

Under the last-mentioned grant a claim has been set up to as much of
that system as relates to roads. Under this it extends alike to roads
and canals.

We must examine this grant by the same rules of construction that
were applied to the preceding one. The object was to take this power
from the individual States and to vest it in the General Government.
This ha