As to the last of these sources of power, that of disposing of the territory and other public property of the United States, it may be conceded, that it authorizes Congress, in the management of the public property, to make improvements essential to the successful execution of the trust; but this must be the primary object of any such improvement, and it would be an abuse of the trust to sacrifice the interest of the property to incidental purposes.

As to the other assumed sources of general power over internal improvements, they being specific powers, of which this is supposed to be the incident, if the framers of the Constitution, wise and thoughtful men as they were, intended to confer on Congress the power over a subject so wide as the whole field of internal improvements, it is remarkable that they did not use language clearly to express it; or, in other words, that they did not give it as a distinct and substantive power, instead of making it the implied incident of some other one. For such is the magnitude of the supposed incidental power and its capacity of expansion, that any system established under it would exceed each of the others, in the amount of expenditure and number of the persons employed, which would thus be thrown upon the general government. This position may be illustrated by taking, as a single example, one of the many things comprehended clearly in the idea of "a general system of internal improvements," namely, roads. Let it be supposed that the power to construct roads over the whole Union, according to the suggestion of President J. Q. Adams, in 1807, whilst a member of the Senate of the United States, had been conceded. Congress would have begun, in pursuance of the state of knowledge at the time, by constructing turnpikes. Then, as knowledge advanced, it would have constructed canals; and at the present time, it would have been embarked in an almost limitless scheme of railroads.

Now, there are in the United States, the results of State or private enterprize, upwards of 17,000 miles of railroads, and 5,000 miles of canals, in all 22,000 miles, the total cost of which may be estimated at little short of six hundred millions of dollars; and if the same works had been constructed by the federal government, supposing the thing to have been practicable, the cost would have probably been not less than nine hundred millions of dollars. The number of persons employed in superintending, managing, and keeping up these canals and railroads may be stated at one hundred and twenty-six thousand, or thereabouts; to which are to be added seventy thousand or eighty thousand employed on the

railroads in construction, making a total of at least two hundred thousand persons, representing in families nearly a million of souls, employed on or maintained by this one class of public works in the United States.

In view of all this, it is not easy to estimate the disastrous consequences which must have resulted from such extended local improvements being undertaken by the general government. State legislation upon this subject would have been suspended, and private enterprize paralyzed, while 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 cannot 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 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 empowers it "to exercise exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the State in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings." But any such supposition will be seen to be groundless, when this provision is carefully examined, and compared with other parts of the Constitution.

It is undoubtedly true, that "like authority" refers back to "exclusive legislation in all cases whatever," as applied to the District of Columbia; and there is, in the District, no division of powers as between the general and the State gov

ernments.

In those places which the United States has purchased or retains within any of the States-sites for dock-yards or forts, for example-legal process of the given State is still permitted to run for some purposes, and therefore the jurisdiction of the United States is not absolutely perfect. But let us assume, for the argument's sake, that the jurisdiction of the United States in a tract of land ceded to it for the purpose of a dock-yard or fort, by Virginia or Maryland, is as complete as in that ceded by them for the seat of government, and then proceed to analyze this clause of the Constitution.

It provides that Congress shall have certain legislative authority over all places purchased by the United States for certain purposes. It implies that Congress has otherwise the power to purchase. But where does Congress get the power to purchase? Manifestly it must be from some other clause of the Constitution, for it is not conferred by this one. Now, as it is a fundamental principle that the Constitution is one of limited powers, the authority to purchase must be conferred in one of the enumerations of legislative power. So that the power to purchase is itself not an unlimited one, but is limited by the objects in regard to which legislative authority is directly conferred.

The other expressions of the clause in question confirm this conclusion, since the jurisdiction is given as to places

purchased for certain enumerated objects or purposes. Of these, the first great division, forts, magazines, arsenals and dock-yards are obviously referable to recognized heads of specific constitutional power. There remains only the phrase "and other needful buildings." Wherefore needful? Needful for any possible purpose within the whole range of the business of society and of government? Clearly not; but only such "buildings" as are "needful" to the United States in the exercise of any of the powers conferred on Congress. Thus the United States need, in the exercise of admitted powers, not only forts, magazines, arsenals and dock-yards, but also court-houses, prisons, custom-houses, and postoffices, within the respective States. Places for the erection of such buildings the general government may constitutionally purchase, and, having purchased them, the jurisdiction over them belongs to the United States. So, if the general government has the power to build a light-house or a beacon, it may purchase a place for that object; and having purchased it, then this clause of the Constitution gives jurisdiction over it. Still the power to purchase for the purpose of erecting a light-house or beacon, must depend on the existence of the power to erect; and if that power exists, it must be sought after in some other clause of the Constitution. From whatever point of view, therefore, the subject is regarded, whether as a question of express or implied power, the conclusion is the same, that Congress has no constitutional authority to carry on a system of internal improvements; and in this conviction the system has been steadily opposed by the soundest expositors of the functions of the government.

It is not to be supposed that in no conceivable case shall there be doubt as to whether a given object be, or not, a necessary incident of the military, naval, or any other power. As man is imperfect, so are his methods of uttering his thoughts. Human language, save in expressions for the exact sciences, must always fail to preclude all possibility of controversy. Hence it is that, in one branch of the subject the question of the power of Congress to make appropriations in aid of navigation-there is less of positive conviction than in regard to the general subject; and it therefore seems proper, in this respect, to revert to the history of the practice of the government.

Among the very earliest acts of the first session of Congress, was that for the establishment and support of lighthouses, approved by President Washington on the 7th of August, 1789, which contains the following provisions :

"That all expenses which shall accrue, from and after the fifteenth day of August, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, in the necessary support, maintenance, and repairs of all light-houses, beacons, buoys and public piers, erected, placed, or sunk before the passing of this act, at the entrance of or within any bay, inlet, harbor, or port of the United States, for rendering the navigation thereof easy and safe, shall be defrayed out of the treasury of the United States: Provided, nevertheless, That none of the said expenses shall continue to be so defrayed, after the expiration of one year from the day aforesaid, unless such light-houses, beacons, buoys, and public piers shall, in the meantime, be ceded to, and vested in the United States, by the State or States, respectively, in which the same may be, together with the lands and tenements thereunto belonging, and together with the jurisdiction of the same." Acts containing appropriations for this class of public works were passed in 1791, 1792, 1793, and so on, from year to year, down to the present time; and the tenor of these acts, when examined with reference to other parts of the subject, is worthy of special consideration.

It is a remarkable fact that, for a period of more than thirty years after the adoption of the Constitution, all appropriations of this class were confined, with scarcely an apparent exception, to the construction of light houses, beacons, buoys, and public piers, and the stakeage of channels;-to render navigation "safe and easy," it is true, but only by indicating to the navigator obstacles in his way, not by removing those obstacles, nor in any other respect changing artificially the pre-existing natural condition of the earth and sea. It is obvious, however, that works of art for the removal of natural impediments to navigation, or to prevent their formation, or for supplying harbors where these do not exist, are also means of rendering navigation safe and easy; and may, in supposable cases, be the most efficient, as well as the most economical, of such means. Nevertheless, it is not until the year 1824 that, in an act to improve the navigation of the rivers Ohio and Mississippi, and in another act making appropriations for deepening the channel leading into the harbor of Presque Isle, on Lake Erie, and for repairing Plymouth Beach, in Massachusetts Bay, we have any example of an appropriation for the improvement of harbors, in the nature of those provided for in the bill returned by me to the House of Representatives.

It appears not probable that the abstinence of Congress in this respect is attributable altogether to considerations of