is yet to be decided. Considered
in connection with the difficulties which have heretofore attended
appropriations for purposes of internal improvement, and with those
which this experience tells us will certainly arise whenever power
over such subjects may be exercised by the General Government, it is
hoped that it may lead to the adoption of some plan which will
reconcile the diversified interests of the States and strengthen the
bonds which unite them. Every member of the Union, in peace and in
war, will be benefited by the improvement of inland navigation and
the construction of highways in the several States. Let us, then,
endeavor to attain this benefit in a mode which will be satisfactory
to all. That hitherto adopted has by many of our fellow-citizens
been deprecated as an infraction of the Constitution, while by
others it has been viewed as inexpedient. All feel that it has been
employed at the expense of harmony in the legislative councils.

And adverting to the constitutional power of Congress to make what I
considered a proper disposition of the surplus revenue, I subjoined the
following remarks:

To avoid these evils it appears to me that the most safe, just, and
federal disposition which could be made of the surplus revenue would
be its apportionment among the several States according to their
ratio of representation, and should this measure not be found
warranted by the Constitution that it would be expedient to propose
to the States an amendment authorizing it.

The constitutional power of the Federal Government to construct or
promote works of internal improvement presents itself in two points of
view--the first as bearing upon the sovereignty of the States within
whose limits their execution is contemplated, if jurisdiction of the
territory which they may occupy be claimed as necessary to their
preservation and use; the second as asserting the simple right to
appropriate money from the National Treasury in aid of such works when
undertaken by State authority, surrendering the claim of jurisdiction.
In the first view the question of power is an open one, and can be
decided without the embarrassments attending the other, arising from the
practice of the Government. Although frequently and strenuously
attempted, the power to this extent has never been exercised by the
Government in a single instance. It does not, in my opini