hile applications for appropriations would have
perverted the legislation of Congress, exhausted the National Treasury,
and left the people burdened with a heavy public debt, beyond the
capacity of generations to discharge.

Is it conceivable that the framers of the Constitution intended that
authority drawing after it such immense consequences should be inferred
by implication as the incident of enumerated powers? I can not think
this, and the impossibility of supposing it would be still more glaring
if similar calculations were carried out in regard to the numerous
objects of material, moral, and political usefulness of which the idea
of internal improvement admits. It may be safely inferred that if the
framers of the Constitution had intended to confer the power to make
appropriations for the objects indicated, it would have been enumerated
among the grants expressly made to Congress.. When, therefore, any one
of the powers actually enumerated is adduced or referred to as the
ground of an assumption to warrant the incidental or implied power of
"internal improvement," that hypothesis must be rejected, or at least
can be no further admitted than as the particular act of internal
improvement may happen to be necessary to the exercise of the granted
power. Thus, when the object of a given road, the clearing of a
particular channel, or the construction of a particular harbor of refuge
is manifestly required by the exigencies of the naval or military
service of the country, then it seems to me undeniable that it may be
constitutionally comprehended in the powers to declare war, to provide
and maintain a navy, and to raise and support armies. At the same time,
it would be a misuse of these powers and a violation of the Constitution
to undertake to build upon them a great system of internal improvements.
And similar reasoning applies to the assumption of any such power as
is involved in that to establish post-roads and to regulate commerce.
If the particular improvement, whether by land or sea, be necessary to
the execution of the enumerated powers, then, but not otherwise, it
falls within the jurisdiction of Congress. To this extent only can
the power be claimed as the incident of any express grant to the
Federal Government.

But there is one clause of the Constitution in which it has been
suggested that express authority to construct works of internal
improvement has been conferred on Congress, namely, that which empower