nd to every purpose according to their will and pleasure?
They certainly have not. The Government of the United States is a
limited Government, instituted for great national purposes, and for
those only. Other interests are committed to the States, whose duty
it is to provide for them. Each government should look to the great
and essential purposes for which it was instituted and confine itself
to those purposes. A State government will rarely if ever apply money to
national purposes without making it a charge to the nation. The people
of the State would not permit it. Nor will Congress be apt to apply
money in aid of the State administrations for purposes strictly local
in which the nation at large has no interest, although the State should
desire it. The people of the other States would condemn it. They would
declare that Congress had no right to tax them for such a purpose, and
dismiss at the next election such of their representatives as had voted
for the measure, especially if it should be severely felt. I do not
think that in offices of this kind there is much danger of the two
Governments mistaking their interests or their duties. I rather expect
that they would soon have a clear and distinct understanding of them
and move on in great harmony.

Good roads and canals will promote many very important national
purposes. They will facilitate the operations of war, the movements of
troops, the transportation of cannon, of provisions, and every warlike
store, much to our advantage and to the disadvantage of the enemy in
time of war. Good roads will facilitate the transportation of the mail,
and thereby promote the purposes of commerce and political intelligence
among the people. They will by being properly directed to these objects
enhance the value of our vacant lands, a treasure of vast resource to
the nation. To the appropriation of the public money to improvements
having these objects in view and carried to a certain extent I do not
see any well-founded constitutional objection.

In regard to our foreign concerns, provided they are managed with
integrity and ability, great liberality is allowable in the application
of the public money. In the management of these concerns no State
interests can be affected, no State rights violated. The complete and
exclusive control over them is vested in Congress. The power to form
treaties of alliance and commerce with foreign powers, to regulate by
law our commerce with them, t