_May 27, 1830_.
_To the House of Representatives_.
Gentlemen: I have maturely considered the bill proposing to authorize "a
subscription of stock in the Maysville, Washington, Paris, and Lexington
Turnpike Road Company," and now return the same to the House of
Representatives, in which it originated, with my objections to its
passage.
Sincerely friendly to the improvement of our country by means of roads
and canals, I regret that any difference of opinion in the mode of
contributing to it should exist between us; and if in stating this
difference I go beyond what the occasion may be deemed to call for, I
hope to find an apology in the great importance of the subject, an
unfeigned respect for the high source from which this branch of it has
emanated, and an anxious wish to be correctly understood by my
constituents in the discharge of all my duties. Diversity of sentiment
among public functionaries actuated by the same general motives, on the
character and tendency of particular measures, is an incident common to
all Governments, and the more to be expected in one which, like ours,
owes its existence to the freedom of opinion, and must be upheld by the
same influence. Controlled as we thus are by a higher tribunal, before
which our respective acts will be canvassed with the indulgence due to
the imperfections of our nature, and with that intelligence and unbiased
judgment which are the true correctives of error, all that our
responsibility demands is that the public good should be the measure of
our views, dictating alike their frank expression and honest
maintenance.
In the message which was presented to Congress at the opening of its
present session I endeavored to exhibit briefly my views upon the
important and highly interesting subject to which our attention is now
to be directed. I was desirous of presenting to the representatives of
the several States in Congress assembled the inquiry whether some mode
could not be devised which would reconcile the diversity of opinion
concerning the powers of this Government over the subject of internal
improvement, and the manner in which these powers, if conferred by the
Constitution, ought to be exercised. The act which I am called upon to
consider has, therefore, been passed with a knowledge of my views on
this question, as these are expressed in the message referred to. In
that document the following suggestions will be found:
After the extinction of the public debt it is not probable that any
adjustment of the tariff upon principles satisfactory to the people
of the Union will until a remote period, if ever, leave the
Government without a considerable surplus in the Treasury beyond
what may be required for its current service. As, then, the period
approaches when the application of the revenue to the payment of
debt will cease, the disposition of the surplus will present a
subject for the serious deliberation of Congress; and it may be
fortunate for the country that it is yet to be decided. Considered
in connection with the difficulties which have heretofore attended
appropriations for purposes of internal improvement, and with those
which this experience tells us will certainly arise whenever power
over such subjects may be exercised by the General Government, it is
hoped that it may lead to the adoption of some plan which will
reconcile the diversified interests of the States and strengthen the
bonds which unite them. Every member of the Union, in peace and in
war, will be benefited by the improvement of inland navigation and
the construction of highways in the several States. Let us, then,
endeavor to attain this benefit in a mode which will be satisfactory
to all. That hitherto adopted has by many of our fellow-citizens
been deprecated as an infraction of the Constitution, while by
others it has been viewed as inexpedient. All feel that it has been
employed at the expense of harmony in the legislative councils.
And adverting to the constitutional power of Congress to make what I
considered a proper disposition of the surplus revenue, I subjoined the
following remarks:
To avoid these evils it appears to me that the most safe, just, and
federal disposition which could be made of the surplus revenue would
be its apportionment among the several States according to their
ratio of representation, and should this measure not be found
warranted by the Constitution that it would be expedient to propose
to the States an amendment authorizing it.
The constitutional power of the Federal Government to construct or
promote works of internal improvement presents itself in two points of
view--the first as bearing upon the sovereignty of the States within
whose limits their execution is contemplated, if jurisdiction of the
territory which they may occupy be claimed as necessary to their
preservation and use; the second as asserting the simple right to
appropriate money from the National Treasury in aid of such works when
undertaken by State authority, surrendering the claim of jurisdiction.
In the first view the question of power is an open one, and can be
decided without the embarrassments attending the other, arising from the
practice of the Government. Although frequently and strenuously
attempted, the power to this extent has never been exercised by the
Government in a single instance. It does not, in my opinion, possess it;
and no bill, therefore, which admits it can receive my official
sanction.
But in the other view of the power the question is differently situated.
The ground taken at an early period of the Government was "that whenever
money has been raised by the general authority and is to be applied to a
particular measure, a question arises whether the particular measure be
within the enumerated authorities vested in Congress. If it be, the
money requisite for it may be applied to it; if not, no such application
can be made." The document in which this principle was first advanced is
of deservedly high authority, and should be held in grateful remembrance
for its immediate agency in rescuing the country from much existing
abuse and for its conservative effect upon some of the most valuable
principles of the Constitution. The symmetry and purity of the
Government would doubtless have been better preserved if this
restriction of the power of appropriation could have been maintained
without weakening its ability to fulfill the general objects of its
institution, an effect so likely to attend its admission,
notwithstanding its apparent fitness, that every subsequent
Administration of the Government, embracing a period of thirty out of
the forty-two years of its existence, has adopted a more enlarged
construction of the power. It is not my purpose to detain you by a
minute recital of the acts which sustain this assertion, but it is
proper that I should notice some of the most prominent in order that the
reflections which they suggest to my mind may be better understood.
In the Administration of Mr. Jefferson we have two examples of the
exercise of the right of appropriation, which in the considerations that
led to their adoption and in their effects upon the public mind have had
a greater agency in marking the character of the power than any
subsequent events. I allude to the payment of $15,000,000 for the
purchase of Louisiana and to the original appropriation for the
construction of the Cumberland road, the latter act deriving much weight
from the acquiescence and approbation of three of the most powerful of
the original members of the Confederacy, expressed through their
respective legislatures. Although the circumstances of the latter case
may be such as to deprive so much of it as relates to the actual
construction of the road of the force of an obligatory exposition of the
Constitution, it must, nevertheless, be admitted that so far as the mere
appropriation of money is concerned they present the principle in its
most imposing aspect. No less than twenty-three different laws have been
passed, through all the forms of the Constitution, appropriating upward
of $2,500,000 out of the National Treasury in support of that
improvement, with the approbation of every President of the United
States, including my predecessor, since its commencement.
Independently of the sanction given to appropriations for the Cumberland
and other roads and objects under this power, the Administration of Mr.
Madison was characterized by an act which furnishes the strongest
evidence of his opinion of its extent. A bill was passed through both
Houses of Congress and presented for his approval, "setting apart and
pledging certain funds for constructing roads and canals and improving
the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and
give security to internal commerce among the several States and to
render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions for the
common defense." Regarding the bill as asserting a power in the Federal
Government to construct roads and canals within the limits of the States
in which they were made, he objected to its passage on the ground of its
unconstitutionality, declaring that the assent of the respective States
in the mode provided by the bill could not confer the power in question;
that the only cases in which the consent and cession of particular
States can extend the power of Congress are those specified and provided
for in the Constitution, and superadding to these avowals his opinion
that "a restriction of the power 'to provide for the common defense and
general welfare' to cases which are to be provided for by the
expenditure of money would still leave within the legislative power of
Congress all the great and most important measures of Government, money
being the ordinary and necessary means of carrying them into execution."
I have not been able to consider these declarations in any other point
of view than as a concession that the right of appropriation is not
limited by the power to carry into effect the measure for which the
money is asked, as was formerly contended.
The views of Mr. Monroe upon this subject were not left to inference.
During his Administration a bill was passed through both Houses of
Congress conferring the jurisdiction and prescribing the mode by which
the Federal Government should exercise it in the case of the Cumberland
road. He returned it with objections to its passage, and in assigning
them took occasion to say that in the early stages of the Government he
had inclined to the construction that it had no right to expend money
except in the performance of acts authorized by the other specific
grants of power, according to a strict construction of them, but that on
further reflection and observation his mind had undergone a change; that
his opinion then was "that Congress have an unlimited power to raise
money, and that in its appropriation they have a discretionary power,
restricted only by the duty to appropriate it to purposes of common
defense, and of general, not local, national, not State, benefit;" and
this was avowed to be the governing principle through the residue of his
Administration. The views of the last Administration are of such recent
date as to render a particular reference to them unnecessary. It is well
known that the appropriating power, to the utmost extent which had been
claimed for it, in relation to internal improvements was fully
recognized and exercised by it.
This brief reference to known facts will be sufficient to show the
difficulty, if not impracticability, of bringing back the operations of
the Government to the construction of the Constitution set up in 1798,
assuming that to be its true reading in relation to the power under
consideration, thus giving an admonitory proof of the force of
implication and the necessity of guarding the Constitution with
sleepless vigilance against the authority of precedents which have not
the sanction of its most plainly defined powers; for although it is the
duty of all to look to that sacred instrument instead of the statute
book, to repudiate at all times encroachments upon its spirit, which are
too apt to be effected by the conjuncture of peculiar and facilitating
circumstances, it is not less true that the public good and the nature
of our political institutions require that individual differences should
yield to a well-settled acquiescence of the people and confederated
authorities in particular constructions of the Constitution on doubtful
points. Not to concede this much to the spirit of our institutions would
impair their stability and defeat the objects of the Constitution
itself.
The bill before me does not call for a more definite opinion upon the
particular circumstances which will warrant appropriations of money by
Congress to aid works of internal improvement, for although the
extension of the power to apply money beyond that of carrying into
effect the object for which it is appropriated has, as we have seen,
been long claimed and exercised by the Federal Government, yet such
grants have always been professedly under the control of the general
principle that the works which might be thus aided should be "of a
general, not local, national, not State," character. A disregard of this
distinction would of necessity lead to the subversion of the federal
system. That even this is an unsafe one, arbitrary in its nature, and
liable, consequently, to great abuses, is too obvious to require the
confirmation of experience. It is, however, sufficiently definite and
imperative to my mind to forbid my approbation of any bill having the
character of the one under consideration. I have given to its provisions
all the reflection demanded by a just regard for the interests of those
of our fellow-citizens who have desired its passage, and by the respect
which is due to a coordinate branch of the Government, but I am not able
to view it in any other light than as a measure of purely local
character; or, if it can be considered national, that no further
distinction between the appropriate duties of the General and State
Governments need be attempted, for there can be no local interest that
may not with equal propriety be denominated national. It has no
connection with any established system of improvements; is exclusively
within the limits of a State, starting at a point on the Ohio River and
running out 60 miles to an interior town, and even as far as the State
is interested conferring partial instead of general advantages.
Considering the magnitude and importance of the power, and the
embarrassments to which, from the very nature of the thing, its exercise
must necessarily be subjected, the real friends of internal improvement
ought not to be willing to confide it to accident and chance. What is
properly _national_ in its character or otherwise is an inquiry which is
often extremely difficult of solution. The appropriations of one year
for an object which is considered national may be rendered nugatory by
the refusal of a succeeding Congress to continue the work on the ground
that it is local. No aid can be derived from the intervention of
corporations. The question regards the character of the work, not that
of those by whom it is to be accomplished. Notwithstanding the union of
the Government with the corporation by whose immediate agency any work
of internal improvement is carried on, the inquiry will still remain. Is
it national and conducive to the benefit of the whole, or local and
operating only to the advantage of a portion of the Union?
But although I might not feel it to be my official duty to interpose the
Executive veto to the passage of a bill appropriating money for the
construction of such works as are authorized by the States and are
national in their character, I do not wish to be understood as
expressing an opinion that it is expedient at this time for the General
Government to embark in a system of this kind; and anxious that my
constituents should be possessed of my views on this as well as on all
other subjects which they have committed to my discretion, I shall state
them frankly and briefly. Besides many minor considerations, there are
two prominent views of the subject which have made a deep impression
upon my mind, which, I think, are well entitled to your serious
attention, and will, I hope, be maturely weighed by the people.
From the official communication submitted to you it appears that if no
adverse and unforeseen contingency happens in our foreign relations and
no unusual diversion be made of the funds set apart for the payment of
the national debt we may look with confidence to its entire
extinguishment in the short period of four years. The extent to which
this pleasing anticipation is dependent upon the policy which may be
pursued in relation to measures of the character of the one now under
consideration must be obvious to all, and equally so that the events of
the present session are well calculated to awaken public solicitude upon
the subject. By the statement from the Treasury Department and those
from the clerks of the Senate and House of Representatives, herewith
submitted, it appears that the bills which have passed into laws, and
those which in all probability will pass before the adjournment of
Congress, anticipate appropriations which, with the ordinary
expenditures for the support of Government, will exceed considerably the
amount in the Treasury for the year 1830. Thus, whilst we are
diminishing the revenue by a reduction of the duties on tea, coffee, and
cocoa the appropriations for internal improvement are increasing beyond
the available means of the Treasury. And if to this calculation be added
the amounts contained in bills which are pending before the two Houses,
it may be safely affirmed that $10,000,000 would not make up the excess
over the Treasury receipts, unless the payment of the national debt be
postponed and the means now pledged to that object applied to those
enumerated in these bills. Without a well-regulated system of internal
improvement this exhausting mode of appropriation is not likely to be
avoided, and the plain consequence must be either a continuance of the
national debt or a resort to additional taxes.
Although many of the States, with a laudable zeal and under the
influence of an enlightened policy, are successfully applying their
separate efforts to works of this character, the desire to enlist the
aid of the General Government in the construction of such as from their
nature ought to devolve upon it, and to which the means of the
individual States are inadequate, is both rational and patriotic, and if
that desire is not gratified now it does not follow that it never will
be. The general intelligence and public spirit of the American people
furnish a sure guaranty that at the proper time this policy will be made
to prevail under circumstances more auspicious to its successful
prosecution than those which now exist. But great as this object
undoubtedly is, it is not the only one which demands the fostering care
of the Government. The preservation and success of the republican
principle rest with us. To elevate its character and extend its
influence rank among our most important duties, and the best means to
accomplish this desirable end are those which will rivet the attachment
of our citizens to the Government of their choice by the comparative
lightness of their public burthens and by the attraction which the
superior success of its operations will present to the admiration and
respect of the world. Through the favor of an overruling and indulgent
Providence our country is blessed with general prosperity and our
citizens exempted from the pressure of taxation, which other less
favored portions of the human family are obliged to bear; yet it is true
that many of the taxes collected from our citizens through the medium of
imposts have for a considerable period been onerous. In many particulars
these taxes have borne severely upon the laboring and less prosperous
classes of the community, being imposed on the necessaries of life, and
this, too, in cases where the burthen was not relieved by the
consciousness that it would ultimately contribute to make us independent
of foreign nations for articles of prime necessity by the encouragement
of their growth and manufacture at home. They have been cheerfully borne
because they were thought to be necessary to the support of Government
and the payment of the debts unavoidably incurred in the acquisition and
maintenance of our national rights and liberties. But have we a right to
calculate on the same cheerful acquiescence when it is known that the
necessity for their continuance would cease were it not for irregular,
improvident, and unequal appropriations of the public funds? Will not
the people demand, as they have a right to do, such a prudent system of
expenditure as will pay the debts of the Union and authorize the
reduction of every tax to as low a point as the wise observance of the
necessity to protect that portion of our manufactures and labor whose
prosperity is essential to our national safety and independence will
allow? When the national debt is paid, the duties upon those articles
which we do not raise may be repealed with safety, and still leave, I
trust, without oppression to any section of the country, an accumulating
surplus fund, which may be beneficially applied to some well-digested
system of improvement.
Under this view the question as to the manner in which the Federal
Government can or ought to embark in the construction of roads and
canals, and the extent to which it may impose burthens on the people for
these purposes, may be presented on its own merits, free of all disguise
and of every embarrassment, except such as may arise from the
Constitution itself. Assuming these suggestions to be correct, will not
our constituents require the observance of a course by which they can be
effected? Ought they not to require it? With the best disposition to
aid, as far as I can conscientiously, in furtherance of works of
internal improvement, my opinion is that the soundest views of national
policy at this time point to such a course. Besides the avoidance of an
evil influence upon the local concerns of the country, how solid is the
advantage which the Government will reap from it in the elevation of its
character! How gratifying the effect of presenting to the world the
sublime spectacle of a Republic of more than 12,000,000 happy people, in
the fifty-fourth year of her existence, after having passed through two
protracted wars--the one for the acquisition and the other for the
maintenance of liberty--free from debt and with all her immense
resources unfettered! What a salutary influence would not such an
exhibition exercise upon the cause of liberal principles and free
government throughout the world! Would we not ourselves find in its
effect an additional guaranty that our political institutions will be
transmitted to the most remote posterity without decay? A course of
policy destined to witness events like these can not be benefited by a
legislation which tolerates a scramble for appropriations that have no
relation to any general system of improvement, and whose good effects
must of necessity be very limited. In the best view of these
appropriations, the abuses to which they lead far exceed the good which
they are capable of promoting. They may be resorted to as artful
expedients to shift upon the Government the losses of unsuccessful
private speculation, and thus, by ministering to personal ambition and
self-aggrandizement, tend to sap the foundations of public virtue and
taint the administration of the Government with a demoralizing
influence.
In the other view of the subject, and the only remaining one which it is
my intention to present at this time, is involved the expediency of
embarking in a system of internal improvement without a previous
amendment of the Constitution explaining and defining the precise powers
of the Federal Government over it. Assuming the right to appropriate
money to aid in the construction of national works to be warranted by
the cotemporaneous and continued exposition of the Constitution, its
insufficiency for the successful prosecution of them must be admitted by
all candid minds. If we look to usage to define the extent of the right,
that will be found so variant and embracing so much that has been
overruled as to involve the whole subject in great uncertainty and to
render the execution of our respective duties in relation to it replete
with difficulty and embarrassment. It is in regard to such works and the
acquisition of additional territory that the practice obtained its first
footing. In most, if not all, other disputed questions of appropriation
the construction of the Constitution may be regarded as unsettled if the
right to apply money in the enumerated cases is placed on the ground of
usage.
This subject has been one of much, and, I may add, painful, reflection
to me. It has bearings that are well calculated to exert a powerful
influence upon our hitherto prosperous system of government, and which,
on some accounts, may even excite despondency in the breast of an
American citizen. I will not detain you with professions of zeal in the
cause of internal improvements. If to be their friend is a virtue which
deserves commendation, our country is blessed with an abundance of it,
for I do not suppose there is an intelligent citizen who does not wish
to see them flourish. But though all are their friends, but few, I
trust, are unmindful of the means by which they should be promoted; none
certainly are so degenerate as to desire their success at the cost of
that sacred instrument with the preservation of which is indissolubly
bound our country's hopes. If different impressions are entertained in
any quarter; if it is expected that the people of this country, reckless
of their constitutional obligations, will prefer their local interest to
the principles of the Union, such expectations will in the end be
disappointed; or if it be not so, then indeed has the world but little
to hope from the example of free government. When an honest observance
of constitutional compacts can not be obtained from communities like
ours, it need not be anticipated elsewhere, and the cause in which there
has been so much martyrdom, and from which so much was expected by the
friends of liberty, may be abandoned, and the degrading truth that man
is unfit for self-government admitted. And this will be the case if
_expediency_ be made a rule of construction in interpreting the
Constitution. Power in no government could desire a better shield for
the insidious advances which it is ever ready to make upon the checks
that are designed to restrain its action.
But I do not entertain such gloomy apprehensions. If it be the wish of
the people that the construction of roads and canals should be conducted
by the Federal Government, it is not only highly expedient, but
indispensably necessary, that a previous amendment of the Constitution,
delegating the necessary power and defining and restricting its exercise
with reference to the sovereignty of the States, should be made. Without
it nothing extensively useful can be effected. The right to exercise as
much jurisdiction as is necessary to preserve the works and to raise
funds by the collection of tolls to keep them in repair can not be
dispensed with. The Cumberland road should be an instructive admonition
of the consequences of acting without this right. Year after year
contests are witnessed, growing out of efforts to obtain the necessary
appropriations for completing and repairing this useful work. Whilst one
Congress may claim and exercise the power, a succeeding one may deny it;
and this fluctuation of opinion must be unavoidably fatal to any scheme
which from its extent would promote the interests and elevate the
character of the country. The experience of the past has shown that the
opinion of Congress is subject to such fluctuations.
If it be the desire of the people that the agency of the Federal
Government should be confined to the appropriation of money in aid of
such undertakings, in virtue of State authorities, then the occasion,
the manner, and the extent of the appropriations should be made the
subject of constitutional regulation. This is the more necessary in
order that they may be equitable among the several States, promote
harmony between different sections of the Union and their
representatives, preserve other parts of the Constitution from being
undermined by the exercise of doubtful powers or the too great extension
of those which are not so, and protect the whole subject against the
deleterious influence of combinations to carry by concert measures
which, considered by themselves, might meet but little countenance.
That a constitutional adjustment of this power upon equitable principles
is in the highest degree desirable can scarcely be doubted, nor can it
fail to be promoted by every sincere friend to the success of our
political institutions. In no government are appeals to the source of
power in cases of real doubt more suitable than in ours. No good motive
can be assigned for the exercise of power by the constituted
authorities, while those for whose benefit it is to be exercised have
not conferred it and may not be willing to confer it. It would seem to
me that an honest application of the conceded powers of the General
Government to the advancement of the common weal present a sufficient
scope to satisfy a reasonable ambition. The difficulty and supposed
impracticability of obtaining an amendment of the Constitution in this
respect is, I firmly believe, in a great degree unfounded. The time has
never yet been when the patriotism and intelligence of the American
people were not fully equal to the greatest exigency, and it never will
when the subject calling forth their interposition is plainly presented
to them. To do so with the questions involved in this bill, and to urge
them to an early, zealous, and full consideration of their deep
importance, is, in my estimation, among the highest of our duties.
A supposed connection between appropriations for internal improvement
and the system of protecting duties, growing out of the anxieties of
those more immediately interested in their success, has given rise to
suggestions which it is proper I should notice on this occasion. My
opinions on these subjects have never been concealed from those who had
a right to know them. Those which I have entertained on the latter have
frequently placed me in opposition to individuals as well as communities
whose claims upon my friendship and gratitude are of the strongest
character, but I trust there has been nothing in my public life which
has exposed me to the suspicion of being thought capable of sacrificing
my views of duty to private considerations, however strong they may have
been or deep the regrets which they are capable of exciting.
As long as the encouragement of domestic manufactures is directed to
national ends it shall receive from me a temperate but steady support.
There is no necessary connection between it and the system of
appropriations. On the contrary, it appears to me that the supposition
of their dependence upon each other is calculated to excite the
prejudices of the public against both. The former is sustained on the
grounds of its consistency with the letter and spirit of the
Constitution, of its origin being traced to the assent of all the
parties to the original compact, and of its having the support and
approbation of a majority of the people, on which account it is at least
entitled to a fair experiment. The suggestions to which I have alluded
refer to a forced continuance of the national debt by means of large
appropriations as a substitute for the security which the system derives
from the principles on which it has hitherto been sustained. Such a
course would certainly indicate either an unreasonable distrust of the
people or a consciousness that the system does not possess sufficient
soundness for its support if left to their voluntary choice and its own
merits. Those who suppose that any policy thus founded can be long
upheld in this country have looked upon its history with eyes very
different from mine. This policy, like every other, must abide the will
of the people, who will not be likely to allow any device, however
specious, to conceal its character and tendency.
In presenting these opinions I have spoken with the freedom and candor
which I thought the occasion for their expression called for, and now
respectfully return the bill which has been under consideration for your
further deliberation and judgment.