ground upon this subject; and we gather that the following are his views in relation to it.

1. The General Government has not constitutional power, to construct or promote internal improvements, without the assent of the States, if jurisdiction over the soil be necessary for their preservation and use:

2. Congress may appropriate money for internal improvements, authorized by a State, if the object be promotive of the general welfare:

3. The power so to appropriate money, originally doubtful, has been confirmed by the practice of every administration, and the continued acquiescence of the people:

4. This restriction on the power to construct, diminishes its efficiency, because of the difficulty to obtain the co-operation of the States:

5. For this reason, and that the national debt might be more promptly paid, that was an inauspicious time for internal improvement: And, to render a doubtful power more clear, as well as to provide for its more equitable execution, the Constitution should be amended, so as to regulate the object, the manner and the amount, of the appropriation.

207. The corollary of these positions is, that, until controlled by constitutional rule, the President, becomes the judge of the nationality of every proposed improvement;if he choose to consider it as tending to the general welfare, (which choice the political quality of the applicants would greatly incline) he would sanction it. The power which this construction creates for the President and the subserviency which it may produce among petitioners for the favour of the Government to their projects, was no doubt seen and duly appreciated.

208. The message on the Maysville road had, however, another aspect. To assure the re-election of the President and the domination of the party, the concurrence of the South was necessary. To preserve this, it was also necessary, that a disposition to overthrow or contract the American System should be exhibited. The encouragement, therefore, of domestic manufactures was also placed upon their "direction to national ends;" giving the South to understand, that, this power, whose existence is controlled by the President, might be modified, and the friends of national industry cause to believe, that their best hope for protection lay in propitiating him. We are fully warranted in this statement of the design of the veto, by the following extract from the Globe of

the 23d of February, 1831, when commenting upon the ef forts of Mr. Calhoun's friends in opposition to the re-election of General Jackson.

"But, anon, came the nominations in Pennsylvania and New York. These were thunderbolts to the intriguers. The veto followed, which prostrated all hopes from the South."

209. Had the veto power been applied, upon principles connected with the public weal-upon almost any other principle, than the nursing of party, it would have been used more consistently; and several bills which received the President's sanction, would have been rejected. He approved bills for removing obstructions from the mouths of rivers-making roads--clearing harbours-erecting fortifications and lighthouses-appropriating to these purposes the vast sum of $2,235,963. To render his inconsistency the more striking, he sanctioned an.appropriation for improving the Conneaut, a petty creek of Lake Erie, in the N. E. angle of the State of Ohio, which is navigable only for about seven miles; holding this for a national object, whilst he rejected the improvement of a great thoroughfare, on which the mail is carried, for eight or ten States and territories, as local and unimportant. And, be it also observed, that, he had, during his last short service in the United States Senate, in 1285, voted, affirinatively, on resolutions involving the whole power of internal improvement, in all its objectionable modes. Thus, he had voted in favour of the bill "to procure the necessary surveys, plans, and estimates, on the subject of roads and canals;"-for the bill "to improve the navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers;"-and for the bill "authorizing a subscription of stock to the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal." This last vote, however, he has since repented; alleging in his message of December 1830, "that positive experience, and a more thorough consideration of the subject, had convinced him of the impropriety or inexpediency of such investments."

Thus, the veto message is wholly irreconcilable with the previous votes and opinions of General Jackson; and we might conclude, were it not the offspring of his lust for power, that, it expressed not his, but the, opinions of his advisers of his cabinet-especially of Mr. Van Buren, his designated successor; whose favourite bat-policy of non-committal and false professions of friendliness, were more fatal to public improvements, than the avowed enmity of other members.

210. The following passage, from the speech of an eminent defender of the American System, is alike descriptive of the message and the man; not of the President, but of him who holds in his hands the strings which move the puppets of the administration.

"I have read that paper, again and again, and I never can peruse it, without thinking of diplomacy, and the name of Talleyrand, Talleyrand, Talleyrand, perpetually, recurring to my mind. It seems to have been written in the spirit of an accommodating soul, who being determined to have fair weather, in any contingency, was equally ready to cry out, Good Lord, good Devil. Are you for Internal Improvements? You may extract from the message texts enough to support your opinion. Are you against them? The message supplies you with abundant authority to support your views. Do you think that a long and uninterrupted current of concurring decisions ought to settle the question of a controverted power? So the authors of the message affect to believe. But, ought any precedents, however numerous, to be allowed to establish a doubtful power? The message agrees with him who thinks not."

66

211. The views, however, of the administration are more fully developed in the message of the President to Congress, of the 7th December, 1830, when he returned the retained bills; namely, "An act for making appropriations for building light houses, light boats, beacons, and monuments, placing buoys, and for improving harbours, and directing surveys, and "An act to authorize a subscription for stock in the Louisville and Portland Canal Company." In relation to the former, he admits the constitutionality of the appropriations, but denies the expediency of some provisions contained in the bill, and assumes to put his judgment, on this subject, against that of the representatives of the people, and to control it. In relation to our foreign commerce," he says, "the burden and benefit of protecting and accommodating it, necessarily go together, and must do so as long as the public revenue is drawn from the people, through the custom house. But local expenditures have not, of themselves, a correspondent operation. From a bill making direct appropriations for such objects, (that is, protecting and accommodating foreign commerce) I should not have withheld my assent. The one now returned, does so in several particulars; but it also contains appropriations for surveys of a local character, which I cannot approve." Hence it follows, that on all subjects of internal improvement,

the progress of the country must depend, not upon the will of the people, as expressed by their representatives, but upon the executive judgment of expediency. And we have just seen, that, according to that judgment, it is expedient to appropriate money to improve the navigation of a creek, whose waters float only a few canoes, but it is inexpedient to improve the navigation of the Ohio, which bears on its broad bosom, hundreds of steamboats, and the produce of mighty States.

66

212. But, the expediency upon this subject is to be determined by a rule which at once cuts off a large proportion of the most populous regions of the country, from the benefit of the acknowledged right of appropriating the public treasure. This rule is furnished in the following passage of the executive message of December, 1834. Although," he says, “I have expressed to Congress my apprehension that these expenditures have sometimes been extravagant, and disproportionate to the advantages to be derived from them, I have not felt it to be my duty to refuse my assent, to bills containing them, and have contented myself to follow, in this respect, in the footsteps of my predecessors. Sensible, however, from experience and observation, of the great abuses to which the unrestricted exercise of this authority, by Congress, was exposed, I have prescribed a limitation for the government of my own conduct, (and we say, in effect, for the government of Congress, too) by which expenditures of this character are confined to places below the ports of entry and delivery."

We forbear to comment upon the arrogance of the individual who thus reproves and condemns the long course of former legislatures, and prescribes a rule of action to the present and future ones, which he himself declares imperfect and unsatisfactory. But we call the attention of our fellow citizens to the fact, that, this avowed policy of the present administration, and doubtless of its proposed successor, is in effect, to exclude all the great waters of the West, and consequently all the great countries of the West, and also the great rivers of the East, from the benefits which they should derive from the Union. The surplus funds of the nation, unless distributed among the States, are not to be used in the improvement of the country, unless upon the seaboard. How, let us ask, can the great States of Pennsylvania and New York submit to a policy, which excludes the navigation of their magnificent Susquehannah from the aid of the national purse, when its improvement for steamboat navigation would,

increase the prosperity of every State upon the Atlantic slope?

213. We have admitted, that, the true rule for applying the national funds to internal improvement, is the public and general character of the improvement, the use and purpose to which it is designed and adapted, not its locality or extent. Thus, the Louisville canal, though located in Kentucky, and having a length of but two miles, is a national object; since it accommodates a trade, in which the whole Union is interested. So, too, the Delaware and Chesapeake canal, the vote upon which the President condemns, is eminently a national object, forming a link of coast navigation most advantageous in peace and inestimable in war: So, too, was the Maysville road, which facilitates the transportation of the mail to important sections of the Union, promotes internal commerce among several States, and may tend to accelerate the movements of armies and the distribution of the munitions of war: So, too, was the bill in aid of the Frederick and Rockville turnpike road,-such road being, in fact, a continuation of the great Cumberland road; for whose formation, more than twenty acts have passed Congress, one of which was, even now, approved by the President. Yet, that officer, in contempt of the judgment of Congress has, in his wisdom, decreed, that these objects are all of a local character.

214. But we should do the President great injustice, did we omit to consider, two other reasons assigned by him for the exercise of his veto. They were, first, that he felt himself unwarranted in sanctioning appropriations for internal improvements, until the national debt was paid; and second, that, it was his duty to repress the disposition which Congress displayed, to squander the public treasure. The reader will be qualified to judge of the force of the first, when instructed, that, had the proposed important improvements, which the President negatived, been perfected, the final payment of the national debt would have been procrastinated ten days. The force and propriety of the second can be felt, only, by those, who believe, that the President is endowed with greater wisdom and more profound knowledge of the public interests, than the representatives of the people in general Congress assembled.

215. The com. of the House of Representatives, Mr. Hemphill chairman, a Jacksonman, to whom so much of the President's message as relates to internal Improvements was referred, reported in direct and full reprobation of his principles, and