ould pay their burdens. They came here and asked the privilege of
taxing their own commerce for their own benefit, and we granted it. I
hold it to be a fundamental principle in all governments, and especially
in all free governments, that you should not put burdens on the people
whenever you can discriminate and put them on those who enjoy the
benefits. You started with that principle with your post-office
establishments.

"Senators, is it just? I tell you, as God lives, it is not just, and you
ought not to do it. There is manhood in the people of the Mississippi
Valley. Let them levy tonnage duties for their own rivers and ports and
put up their own lighthouses, and charge the people who use them for the
benefits conferred. Let the honest farmer who makes his hay, who gathers
his cheese, who raises his meal in Vermont, be not taxed to increase
your magnificent improvements of nature and your already gigantic
wealth. Senators, it is unjust."

During the session of Congress of 1856-57, Senator Toombs again
arraigned the whole system of internal improvements. He carefully
differentiated between building a lighthouse and clearing out a harbor
by the Federal Government. He said in course of the debate: "Where
lighthouses are necessary for the protection of your navy, I admit the
power to make them; but it must be where they are necessary, and not
merely for the benefit and facilitation of commerce. Foreign and
domestic commerce ought to be charged, as in England and France, for the
benefit they receive. I would make the shipowners, the common carriers
of this country, who are constantly using the power of this government
to make money out of the products of honest industry and agriculture,
submit to this rule.

"The power to found a navy is found in the only fountain of power in
this country, the Constitution. The defense of one is the defense of
all. The destruction of nationality is the destruction of the life of
all.

"I say if you take away the property of one man and give it to a
thousand, or if you take away the property of a million and give it to
nineteen millions, you do not create national wealth by transferring it
from the pockets of honest industry to other people's pockets. This is
my principle. It is immovable. The more commerce there is on the
Mississippi the more they are able and competent to pay the expenses of
transporting it, and I only ask that they shall do it."

Mr. Toombs sustained the veto of