for example, from south to north, may be closed at pleasure or by caprice, by any one of the States, or its authorities, through which it passes-by that of Delaware, or any other. Is it possible that that construction of the constitution can be correct, which allows a law of the United States, enacted for the good of the whole, to be obstructed or defeated in its operation by any one of twenty-four sovereigns? The gentleman from Virginia, it is true, denies the right of a State to close a road which has been designated as a post road. But suppose the State, no longer having occasion to use it for its own separate and peculiar purposes, withdraws all care and attention from its preservation. Can the State be compelled to repair it? No! the gentleman from Virginia must say; and I will say, May not the general government repair this road which is abandoned by the State power? May it not repair it in the most efficacious manner? And may it not protect and defend that which it has thus repaired, and which there is no longer an interest or inclination in the State to protect and defend? Or does the gentleman mean to contend that a road may exist in the statute book, which a State will not, and the general government cannot, repair and improve? And what sort of an account should we render to the people of the United States, of the execution of the high trust confided for their benefit to us, if we were to tell them that we had failed to execute it, because a State would not make a road for us?

The roads, and other internal improvements of States, are made in reference to their individual interests. It is the eye only of the whole, and the power of the whole, that can look to the interests of all. In the infancy of the government, and in the actual state of the public treasury, it may be the only alternative left us to use those roads, which are made for State purposes, to promote the national object, ill as they may be adapted to it. It may never be necessary to make more than a few great national arteries of communication, leaving to the States the lateral and minor ramifications. Even these should only be executed, without pressure upon the resources of the country, and according to the convenience and ability of government. But, surely, in the performance of a great national duty imposed upon this government, which has for its object the distribution of intelligence, civil, commercial, literary, and social, we ought to perform the substance of the trust, and not content ourselves with a mere inefficient paper execution of it. If I am right in these views, the per to

establish post roads being in its nature original and creative, and the government having adopted the roads made by State means only from its inability to exert the whole extent of its authority, the controverted power is expressly granted to Congress, and there is an end of the question.

It ought to be borne in mind, that this power over roads was not contained in the articles of confederation, which limited Congress to the establishment of post-offices; and that the general character of the present constitution, as contrasted with those articles, is that of an enlargement of power. But, if the construction of my opponents be correct, we are left precisely where the articles of confederation left us, notwithstanding the additional words contained in the present constitution. What, too, will the gentleman do with the first member of the clause to establish post offices? Must Congress adopt, designate, some pre-existing office, established by State authority? But there is none such. May it not then fix, build, create, establish offices of its own?

The gentleman from Virginia sought to alarm us by the awful emphasis with which he set before us the total extent of post roads in the Union. Eighty thousand miles of post roads! exclaimed the gentleman; and you will assert for the general government jurisdiction, and erect turnpikes, on such an immense distance? Not to-day, nor to-morrow; but this government is to last, I trust, for ever; we may at least hope it will endure until the wave of population, cultivation, and intelligence shall have washed the Rocky mountains, and have mingled with the Pacific. And may we not also hope that the day will arrive when the improvements and the comforts of social life shall spread over the wide surface of this vast continent? All this is not to be suddenly done. Society must not be burdened or oppressed. Things must be gradual and progressive. The same species of formidable array which the gentleman makes, might be exhibited in reference to the construction of a navy, or any other of the great purposes of government. We might be told of the fleets and vessels of great maritime powers, which whiten the ocean; and triumphantly asked if we should vainly attempt to cope with or rival that tremendous power? And we should shrink from the effort, if we were to listen to his counsels, in hopeless despair. Yes, sir, it is a subject of peculiar delight to me to look forward to the proud

and happy period, distant as it may be, when circulation and association between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the Mexican gulf, shall be as free and perfect as they are at this moment in England, or in any other the most highly improved country on the globe. In the mean time, without bearing heavily upon any of our important interests, let us apply ourselves to the accomplishment of what is most practicable, and immediately necessary.

But what most staggers my honorable friend, is the jurisdiction over the sites of roads, and other internal improvements, which he supposes Congress might assume; and he considers the exercise of such a jurisdiction as furnishing the just occasion for serious alarm. Let us analyze the subject. Prior to the erection of a road under the authority of the general government, there existed, in the State throughout which it passes, no actual exercise of jurisdiction over the ground which it traverses as a road. There was only the possibility of the exercise of such a jurisdiction, when the State should, if ever, erect such a road. But the road is made by the authority of Congress, and out of the fact of its erection arises a necessity for its preservation and protection. The road is some thirty, or fifty, or sixty feet in width, and with that narrow limit passes through a part of the territory of the State. The capital expended in the making of the road incorporates itself with and becomes a part of the permanent and immoveable property of the State. The jurisdiction which is claimed for the general government, is that only which relates to the necessary defence, protection, and preservation of the road. It is of a character altogether conservative. Whatever does not relate to the existence and protection of the road, remains with the State. Murders, trespasses, contracts-all the occurrences and transactions of society upon the road, not affecting its actual existence, will fall within the jurisdiction of the civil or criminal tribunals of the State, as if the road had never been brought into existence. How much remains to the State! How little is claimed for the general government! Is 'it possible that a jurisdiction so limited, so harmless, so unambitious, can be regarded as seriously alarming to the sovereignty of the States ? Congress now asserts and exercises, without contestation, a power to protect the mail in its transit, by the sanction of all suitable penalties. The man who violates it is punished with death, or otherwise, according to the circumstances of the case. This power is exerted as incident to that of establishing post offices and post roads. Is the

protection of the thing in transitu a power more clearly deducible from the grant, than that of facilitating, by means of a practical road, its actual transportation? Mails certainly imply roads, roads imply their own preservation, their preservation implies the power to preserve them, and the constitution tells us, in express terms, that we shall establish the one and the other.

In respect to cutting canals, I admit the question is not quite so clear as in regard to roads. With respect to these, as I have endeavored to show, the power is expressly granted. In regard to canals, it appears to me to be fairly comprehended in, or deducible from, certain granted powers. Congress has power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States. Precisely the same measure of power which is granted in the one case is conferred in the other. And the uniform practical exposition of the constitution, as to the regulation of foreign commerce, is equally applicable to that among the several States. Suppose, instead of directing the legislation of this government constantly, as heretofore, to the object of foreign commerce, to the utter neglect of the interior commerce among the several States, the fact had been reversed, and now, for the first time, we were about to legislate for our foreign trade. Should we not, in that case, hear all the controverted objections made to the erection of buoys, beacons, light-houses, the surveys of coasts, and the other numerous facilities accorded to the foreign trade, which we now hear to the making of roads and canals? Two years ago, a seawall, or in other words, a marine canal, was authorized by an act of Congress in New Hampshire, and I doubt not that many of those voted for it who have now conscientious scruples on this bill. Yes, any thing, every thing may be done for foreign commerce; any thing, every thing on the margin of the ocean; but nothing for domestic trade; nothing for the great interior of the country! Yet, the equity and the beneficence of the constitution equally comprehend both. The gentleman does, indeed, maintain that there is a difference as to the character of the facilities in the two cases. But I put it to his own candor, whether the only difference is not that which springs from the nature of the two elements on which the two species of commerce are conducted-the difference between land and water. The principle is the same, whether you promote commerce by opening for it an artificial channel where now there is none, or by increasing the ease or safety with which it may be conducted through a nat

ural channel which the bounty of Providence has bestowed. In the one case, your object is to facilitate arrival and departure from the ocean to the land. In the other, it is to accomplish the same object from the land to the ocean. Physical obstacles may be greater in the one case than in the other, but the moral or constitutional power equally includes both. The gentleman from Virginia has, to be sure, contended that the power to make these commercial facilities was to be found in another clause of the constitution-that which enables Congress to obtain cessions of territory for specific objects, and grants to it an exclusive jurisdiction. These cessions may be obtained for the "erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, or other needful buildings." It is apparent that it relates altogether to military or naval affairs, and not to the regulation of commerce. How is the marine canal covered by this clause? Is it to be considered as a needful building?" The object of this power is perfectly obvious. The convention saw that, in military or naval posts, such as are indicated, it was indispensably necessary, for their proper government, to vest in Congress the power of exclusive legislation. If we claimed over objects of internal improvement an exclusive jurisdiction, the gentleman might urge, with much force, the clause in question. But the claim of concurrent jurisdiction only is asserted. The gentleman professes himself unable to comprehend how concurrent jurisdiction can be exercised by two different governments at the same time over the same persons and things. But, is not this the fact, with respect to the State and federal governments? Does not every person and every thing, within our limits, sustain a two-fold relation to the State and to the federal authority? The power of taxation, as exerted by both governments, that over the militia, besides many others, is concurrent. No doubt embarrassing cases may be conceived and stated by gentlemen of acute and ingenious minds. One was put to me yesterday. Two canals are desired, one by the federal, and the other by a State government; and there is not a supply of water but for the feeder of one canal-which is to take it? The constitution which ordains the supremacy of the laws of the United States, answers the question. The good of the whole is paramount to the good of a part. The same difficulty might possibly arise in the exercise of the incontestable power of taxation. We know that the imposition of taxes has its limits. There is a maximum which cannot be transcended. Suppose the citizen to be taxed by the general government to the utmost extent of his ability, or a thing as much as it can possibly bear, and the