to all the possible means of the material improvement of the
earth, by developing its natural resources anywhere and everywhere, even
within the proper jurisdiction of the several States. But if there be
any constitutional power thus comprehensive in its nature, must not the
same power embrace within its scope other kinds of improvement of equal
utility in themselves and equally important to the welfare of the whole
country? President Jefferson, while intimating the expediency of so
amending the Constitution as to comprise objects of physical progress
and well-being, does not fail to perceive that "other objects of public
improvement," including "public education" by name, belong to the same
class of powers. In fact, not only public instruction, but hospitals,
establishments of science and art, libraries, and, indeed, everything
appertaining to the internal welfare of the country, are just as much
objects of internal improvement, or, in other words, of internal
utility, as canals and railways.

The admission of the power in either of its senses implies its existence
in the other; and since if it exists at all it involves dangerous
augmentation of the political functions and of the patronage of the
Federal Government, we ought to see clearly by what clause or clauses of
the Constitution it is conferred.

I have had occasion more than once to express, and deem it proper now
to repeat, that it is, in my judgment, to be taken for granted, as a
fundamental proposition not requiring elucidation, that the Federal
Government is the creature of the individual States and of the people
of the States severally; that the sovereign power was in them alone;
that all the powers of the Federal Government are derivative ones, the
enumeration and limitations of which are contained in the instrument
which organized it; and by express terms "the powers not delegated to
the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States
are reserved to the States respectively or to the people."

Starting from this foundation of our constitutional faith and proceeding
to inquire in what part of the Constitution the power of making
appropriations for internal improvements is found, it is necessary to
reject all idea of there being any grant of power in the preamble.
When that instrument says, "We, the people of the United States, in
order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the com