ated to exert a powerful
influence upon our hitherto prosperous system of government, and which,
on some accounts, may even excite despondency in the breast of an
American citizen. I will not detain you with professions of zeal in the
cause of internal improvements. If to be their friend is a virtue which
deserves commendation, our country is blessed with an abundance of it,
for I do not suppose there is an intelligent citizen who does not wish
to see them flourish. But though all are their friends, but few, I
trust, are unmindful of the means by which they should be promoted; none
certainly are so degenerate as to desire their success at the cost of
that sacred instrument with the preservation of which is indissolubly
bound our country's hopes. If different impressions are entertained in
any quarter; if it is expected that the people of this country, reckless
of their constitutional obligations, will prefer their local interest to
the principles of the Union, such expectations will in the end be
disappointed; or if it be not so, then indeed has the world but little
to hope from the example of free government. When an honest observance
of constitutional compacts can not be obtained from communities like
ours, it need not be anticipated elsewhere, and the cause in which there
has been so much martyrdom, and from which so much was expected by the
friends of liberty, may be abandoned, and the degrading truth that man
is unfit for self-government admitted. And this will be the case if
_expediency_ be made a rule of construction in interpreting the
Constitution. Power in no government could desire a better shield for
the insidious advances which it is ever ready to make upon the checks
that are designed to restrain its action.

But I do not entertain such gloomy apprehensions. If it be the wish of
the people that the construction of roads and canals should be conducted
by the Federal Government, it is not only highly expedient, but
indispensably necessary, that a previous amendment of the Constitution,
delegating the necessary power and defining and restricting its exercise
with reference to the sovereignty of the States, should be made. Without
it nothing extensively useful can be effected. The right to exercise as
much jurisdiction as is necessary to preserve the works and to raise
funds by the collection of tolls to keep them in repair can not be
dispensed with. The Cumberland road should be an instructive admonition
of t