ed
the amounts contained in bills which are pending before the two Houses,
it may be safely affirmed that $10,000,000 would not make up the excess
over the Treasury receipts, unless the payment of the national debt be
postponed and the means now pledged to that object applied to those
enumerated in these bills. Without a well-regulated system of internal
improvement this exhausting mode of appropriation is not likely to be
avoided, and the plain consequence must be either a continuance of the
national debt or a resort to additional taxes.

Although many of the States, with a laudable zeal and under the
influence of an enlightened policy, are successfully applying their
separate efforts to works of this character, the desire to enlist the
aid of the General Government in the construction of such as from their
nature ought to devolve upon it, and to which the means of the
individual States are inadequate, is both rational and patriotic, and if
that desire is not gratified now it does not follow that it never will
be. The general intelligence and public spirit of the American people
furnish a sure guaranty that at the proper time this policy will be made
to prevail under circumstances more auspicious to its successful
prosecution than those which now exist. But great as this object
undoubtedly is, it is not the only one which demands the fostering care
of the Government. The preservation and success of the republican
principle rest with us. To elevate its character and extend its
influence rank among our most important duties, and the best means to
accomplish this desirable end are those which will rivet the attachment
of our citizens to the Government of their choice by the comparative
lightness of their public burthens and by the attraction which the
superior success of its operations will present to the admiration and
respect of the world. Through the favor of an overruling and indulgent
Providence our country is blessed with general prosperity and our
citizens exempted from the pressure of taxation, which other less
favored portions of the human family are obliged to bear; yet it is true
that many of the taxes collected from our citizens through the medium of
imposts have for a considerable period been onerous. In many particulars
these taxes have borne severely upon the laboring and less prosperous
classes of the community, being imposed on the necessaries of life, and
this, too, in cases where the burthen was not rel