improvements is now more distinctly made--has become more intense--than
at any former period. The veto message and the Baltimore resolution I
understand to be, in substance, the same thing; the latter being the more
general statement, of which the former is the amplification the bill of
particulars. While I know there are many Democrats, on this floor and
elsewhere, who disapprove that message, I understand that all who voted
for General Cass will thereafter be counted as having approved it, as
having indorsed all its doctrines.
I suppose all, or nearly all, the Democrats will vote for him. Many of
them will do so not because they like his position on this question,
but because they prefer him, being wrong on this, to another whom they
consider farther wrong on other questions. In this way the internal
improvement Democrats are to be, by a sort of forced consent, carried over
and arrayed against themselves on this measure of policy. General Cass,
once elected, will not trouble himself to make a constitutional argument,
or perhaps any argument at all, when he shall veto a river or harbor bill;
he will consider it a sufficient answer to all Democratic murmurs to point
to Mr. Polk's message, and to the Democratic platform. This being the
case, the question of improvements is verging to a final crisis; and the
friends of this policy must now battle, and battle manfully, or surrender
all. In this view, humble as I am, I wish to review, and contest as well
as I may, the general positions of this veto message. When I say general
positions, I mean to exclude from consideration so much as relates to the
present embarrassed state of the treasury in consequence of the Mexican
War.
Those general positions are: that internal improvements ought not to be
made by the General Government--First. Because they would overwhelm the
treasury Second. Because, while their burdens would be general, their
benefits would be local and partial, involving an obnoxious inequality;
and Third. Because they would be unconstitutional. Fourth. Because the
States may do enough by the levy and collection of tonnage duties; or if
not--Fifth. That the Constitution may be amended. "Do nothing at all, lest
you do something wrong," is the sum of these positions is the sum of
this message. And this, with the exception of what is said about
constitutionality, applying as forcibly to what is said about making
improvements by State authority as by the national authority; so that we
must abandon the improvements of the country altogether, by any and every
authority, or we must resist and repudiate the doctrines of this message.
Let us attempt the latter.
The first position is, that a system of internal improvements would
overwhelm the treasury. That in such a system there is a tendency to undue
expansion, is not to be denied. Such tendency is founded in the nature
of the subject. A member of Congress will prefer voting for a bill which
contains an appropriation for his district, to voting for one which
does not; and when a bill shall be expanded till every district shall be
provided for, that it will be too greatly expanded is obvious. But is
this any more true in Congress than in a State Legislature? If a member
of Congress must have an appropriation for his district, so a member of
a Legislature must have one for his county. And if one will overwhelm
the national treasury, so the other will overwhelm the State treasury. Go
where we will, the difficulty is the same. Allow it to drive us from the
halls of Congress, and it will, just as easily, drive us from the State
Legislatures. Let us, then, grapple with it, and test its strength. Let
us, judging of the future by the past, ascertain whether there may not be,
in the discretion of Congress, a sufficient power to limit and restrain
this expansive tendency within reasonable and proper bounds. The President
himself values the evidence of the past. He tells us that at a certain
point of our history more than two hundred millions of dollars had been
applied for to make improvements; and this he does to prove that the
treasury would be overwhelmed by such a system. Why did he not tell us how
much was granted? Would not that have been better evidence? Let us turn
to it, and see what it proves. In the message the President tells us
that "during the four succeeding years embraced by the administration of
President Adams, the power not only to appropriate money, but to apply it,
under the direction and authority of the General Government, as well to
the construction of roads as to the improvement of harbors and rivers,
was fully asserted and exercised." This, then, was the period of greatest
enormity. These, if any, must have been the days of the two hundred
millions. And how much do you suppose was really expended for improvements
during that four years? Two hundred millions? One hundred? Fifty? Ten?
Five? No, sir; less than two millions. As shown by authentic documents,
the expenditures on improvements during 1825, 1826, 1827, and 1828
amounted to one million eight hundred and seventy-nine thousand six
hundred and twenty-seven dollars and one cent. These four years were the
period of Mr. Adams's administration, nearly and substantially. This fact
shows that when the power to make improvements "was fully asserted and
exercised," the Congress did keep within reasonable limits; and what has
been done, it seems to me, can be done again.
Now for the second portion of the message--namely, that the burdens of
improvements would be general, while their benefits would be local and
partial, involving an obnoxious inequality. That there is some degree
of truth in this position, I shall not deny. No commercial object of
government patronage can be so exclusively general as to not be of some
peculiar local advantage. The navy, as I understand it, was established,
and is maintained at a great annual expense, partly to be ready for
war when war shall come, and partly also, and perhaps chiefly, for the
protection of our commerce on the high seas. This latter object is, for
all I can see, in principle the same as internal improvements. The driving
a pirate from the track of commerce on the broad ocean, and the removing
of a snag from its more narrow path in the Mississippi River, cannot,
I think, be distinguished in principle. Each is done to save life and
property, and for nothing else.
The navy, then, is the most general in its benefits of all this class
of objects; and yet even the navy is of some peculiar advantage to
Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, beyond what it
is to the interior towns of Illinois. The next most general object I
can think of would be improvements on the Mississippi River and its
tributaries. They touch thirteen of our States-Pennsylvania, Virginia,
Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois,
Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Now I suppose it will not be denied
that these thirteen States are a little more interested in improvements on
that great river than are the remaining seventeen. These instances of the
navy and the Mississippi River show clearly that there is something of
local advantage in the most general objects. But the converse is also
true. Nothing is so local as to not be of some general benefit. Take,
for instance, the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Considered apart from its
effects, it is perfectly local. Every inch of it is within the State of
Illinois. That canal was first opened for business last April. In a very
few days we were all gratified to learn, among other things, that sugar
had been carried from New Orleans through this canal to Buffalo in New
York. This sugar took this route, doubtless, because it was cheaper than
the old route. Supposing benefit of the reduction in the cost of carriage
to be shared between seller and the buyer, result is that the New Orleans
merchant sold his sugar a little dearer, and the people of Buffalo
sweetened their coffee a little cheaper, than before,--a benefit resulting
from the canal, not to Illinois, where the canal is, but to Louisiana and
New York, where it is not. In other transactions Illinois will, of course,
have her share, and perhaps the larger share too, of the benefits of the
canal; but this instance of the sugar clearly shows that the benefits of
an improvement are by no means confined to the particular locality of
the improvement itself. The just conclusion from all this is that if the
nation refuse to make improvements of the more general kind because their
benefits may be somewhat local, a State may for the same reason refuse to
make an improvement of a local kind because its benefits may be somewhat
general. A State may well say to the nation, "If you will do nothing for
me, I will do nothing for you." Thus it is seen that if this argument of
"inequality" is sufficient anywhere, it is sufficient everywhere, and puts
an end to improvements altogether. I hope and believe that if both the
nation and the States would, in good faith, in their respective spheres
do what they could in the way of improvements, what of inequality might be
produced in one place might be compensated in another, and the sum of the
whole might not be very unequal.
But suppose, after all, there should be some degree of inequality.
Inequality is certainly never to be embraced for its own sake; but is
every good thing to be discarded which may be inseparably connected with
some degree of it? If so, we must discard all government. This Capitol
is built at the public expense, for the public benefit; but does any one
doubt that it is of some peculiar local advantage to the property-holders
and business people of Washington? Shall we remove it for this reason?
And if so, where shall we set it down, and be free from the difficulty?
To make sure of our object, shall we locate it nowhere, and have Congress
hereafter to hold its sessions, as the loafer lodged, "in spots about"?
I make no allusion to the present President when I say there are few
stronger cases in this world of "burden to the many and benefit to the
few," of "inequality," than the Presidency itself is by some thought to
be. An honest laborer digs coal at about seventy cents a day, while the
President digs abstractions at about seventy dollars a day. The coal
is clearly worth more than the abstractions, and yet what a monstrous
inequality in the prices! Does the President, for this reason, propose to
abolish the Presidency? He does not, and he ought not. The true rule, in
determining to embrace or reject anything, is not whether it have any evil
in it, but whether it have more of evil than of good. There are few things
wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of government
policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment
of the preponderance between them is continually demanded. On this
principle the President, his friends, and the world generally act on
most subjects. Why not apply it, then, upon this question? Why, as to
improvements, magnify the evil, and stoutly refuse to see any good in
them?
Mr. Chairman, on the third position of the message the constitutional
question--I have not much to say. Being the man I am, and speaking, where
I do, I feel that in any attempt at an original constitutional argument
I should not be and ought not to be listened to patiently. The ablest and
the best of men have gone over the whole ground long ago. I shall attempt
but little more than a brief notice of what some of them have said. In
relation to Mr. Jefferson's views, I read from Mr. Polk's veto message:
"President Jefferson, in his message to Congress in 1806, recommended an
amendment of the Constitution, with a view to apply an anticipated surplus
in the treasury 'to the great purposes of the public education, roads,
rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may
be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of the federal
powers'; and he adds: 'I suppose an amendment to the Constitution, by
consent of the States, necessary, because the objects now recommended are
not among those enumerated in the Constitution, and to which it permits
the public moneys to be applied.' In 1825, he repeated in his published
letters the opinion that no such power has been conferred upon Congress."
I introduce this not to controvert just now the constitutional opinion,
but to show that, on the question of expediency, Mr. Jefferson's opinion
was against the present President; that this opinion of Mr. Jefferson,
in one branch at least, is in the hands of Mr. Polk like McFingal's
gun--"bears wide and kicks the owner over."
But to the constitutional question. In 1826 Chancellor Kent first
published his Commentaries on American law. He devoted a portion of one of
the lectures to the question of the authority of Congress to appropriate
public moneys for internal improvements. He mentions that the subject had
never been brought under judicial consideration, and proceeds to give a
brief summary of the discussion it had undergone between the legislative
and executive branches of the government. He shows that the legislative
branch had usually been for, and the executive against, the power, till
the period of Mr. J.Q. Adams's administration, at which point he considers
the executive influence as withdrawn from opposition, and added to the
support of the power. In 1844 the chancellor published a new edition of
his Commentaries, in which he adds some notes of what had transpired on
the question since 1826. I have not time to read the original text on
the notes; but the whole may be found on page 267, and the two or three
following pages, of the first volume of the edition of 1844. As to what
Chancellor Kent seems to consider the sum of the whole, I read from one of
the notes:
"Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United
States, Vol. II., pp. 429-440, and again pp. 519-538, has stated at
large the arguments for and against the proposition that Congress have a
constitutional authority to lay taxes and to apply the power to
regulate commerce as a means directly to encourage and protect domestic
manufactures; and without giving any opinion of his own on the contested
doctrine, he has left the reader to draw his own conclusions. I should
think, however, from the arguments as stated, that every mind which has
taken no part in the discussion, and felt no prejudice or territorial bias
on either side of the question, would deem the arguments in favor of the
Congressional power vastly superior."
It will be seen that in this extract the power to make improvements is not
directly mentioned; but by examining the context, both of Kent and Story,
it will be seen that the power mentioned in the extract and the power to
make improvements are regarded as identical. It is not to be denied that
many great and good men have been against the power; but it is insisted
that quite as many, as great and as good, have been for it; and it is
shown that, on a full survey of the whole, Chancellor Kent was of opinion
that the arguments of the latter were vastly superior. This is but the
opinion of a man; but who was that man? He was one of the ablest and most
learned lawyers of his age, or of any age. It is no disparagement to
Mr. Polk, nor indeed to any one who devotes much time to politics, to
be placed far behind Chancellor Kent as a lawyer. His attitude was most
favorable to correct conclusions. He wrote coolly, and in retirement. He
was struggling to rear a durable monument of fame; and he well knew that
truth and thoroughly sound reasoning were the only sure foundations. Can
the party opinion of a party President on a law question, as this purely
is, be at all compared or set in opposition to that of such a man, in
such an attitude, as Chancellor Kent? This constitutional question will
probably never be better settled than it is, until it shall pass under
judicial consideration; but I do think no man who is clear on the
questions of expediency need feel his conscience much pricked upon this.
Mr. Chairman, the President seems to think that enough may be done, in
the way of improvements, by means of tonnage duties under State authority,
with the consent of the General Government. Now I suppose this matter
of tonnage duties is well enough in its own sphere. I suppose it may be
efficient, and perhaps sufficient, to make slight improvements and repairs
in harbors already in use and not much out of repair. But if I have any
correct general idea of it, it must be wholly inefficient for any general
beneficent purposes of improvement. I know very little, or rather nothing
at all, of the practical matter of levying and collecting tonnage
duties; but I suppose one of its principles must be to lay a duty for the
improvement of any particular harbor upon the tonnage coming into that
harbor; to do otherwise--to collect money in one harbor, to be expended
on improvements in another--would be an extremely aggravated form of that
inequality which the President so much deprecates. If I be right in this,
how could we make any entirely new improvement by means of tonnage duties?
How make a road, a canal, or clear a greatly obstructed river? The idea
that we could involves the same absurdity as the Irish bull about the new
boots. "I shall niver git 'em on," says Patrick, "till I wear 'em a day
or two, and stretch 'em a little." We shall never make a canal by tonnage
duties until it shall already have been made awhile, so the tonnage can
get into it.
After all, the President concludes that possibly there may be some great
objects of improvement which cannot be effected by tonnage duties, and
which it therefore may be expedient for the General Government to take
in hand. Accordingly he suggests, in case any such be discovered, the
propriety of amending the Constitution. Amend it for what? If, like
Mr. Jefferson, the President thought improvements expedient, but not
constitutional, it would be natural enough for him to recommend such an
amendment. But hear what he says in this very message:
"In view of these portentous consequences, I cannot but think that this
course of legislation should be arrested, even were there nothing to
forbid it in the fundamental laws of our Union."
For what, then, would he have the Constitution amended? With him it is a
proposition to remove one impediment merely to be met by others which,
in his opinion, cannot be removed, to enable Congress to do what, in his
opinion, they ought not to do if they could.
Here Mr. Meade of Virginia inquired if Mr. Lincoln understood the
President to be opposed, on grounds of expediency, to any and every
improvement.
Mr. Lincoln answered: In the very part of his message of which I am
speaking, I understand him as giving some vague expression in favor of
some possible objects of improvement; but in doing so I understand him
to be directly on the teeth of his own arguments in other parts of it.
Neither the President nor any one can possibly specify an improvement
which shall not be clearly liable to one or another of the objections he
has urged on the score of expediency. I have shown, and might show again,
that no work--no object--can be so general as to dispense its benefits
with precise equality; and this inequality is chief among the "portentous
consequences" for which he declares that improvements should be arrested.
No, sir. When the President intimates that something in the way of
improvements may properly be done by the General Government, he is
shrinking from the conclusions to which his own arguments would force him.
He feels that the improvements of this broad and goodly land are a mighty
interest; and he is unwilling to confess to the people, or perhaps
to himself, that he has built an argument which, when pressed to its
conclusions, entirely annihilates this interest.
I have already said that no one who is satisfied of the expediency of
making improvements needs be much uneasy in his conscience about its
constitutionality. I wish now to submit a few remarks on the general
proposition of amending the Constitution. As a general rule, I think we
would much better let it alone. No slight occasion should tempt us to
touch it. Better not take the first step, which may lead to a habit
of altering it. Better, rather, habituate ourselves to think of it as
unalterable. It can scarcely be made better than it is. New provisions
would introduce new difficulties, and thus create and increase appetite
for further change. No, sir; let it stand as it is. New hands have never
touched it. The men who made it have done their work, and have passed
away. Who shall improve on what they did?
Mr. Chairman, for the purpose of reviewing this message in the least
possible time, as well as for the sake of distinctness, I have analyzed
its arguments as well as I could, and reduced them to the propositions
I have stated. I have now examined them in detail. I wish to detain the
committee only a little while longer with some general remarks upon the
subject of improvements. That the subject is a difficult one, cannot
be denied. Still it is no more difficult in Congress than in the State
Legislatures, in the counties, or in the smallest municipal districts
which anywhere exist. All can recur to instances of this difficulty in the
case of county roads, bridges, and the like. One man is offended because
a road passes over his land, and another is offended because it does not
pass over his; one is dissatisfied because the bridge for which he is
taxed crosses the river on a different road from that which leads from his
house to town; another cannot bear that the county should be got in debt
for these same roads and bridges; while not a few struggle hard to have
roads located over their lands, and then stoutly refuse to let them be
opened until they are first paid the damages. Even between the different
wards and streets of towns and cities we find this same wrangling and
difficulty. Now these are no other than the very difficulties against
which, and out of which, the President constructs his objections of
"inequality," "speculation," and "crushing the treasury." There is but a
single alternative about them: they are sufficient, or they are not. If
sufficient, they are sufficient out of Congress as well as in it, and
there is the end. We must reject them as insufficient, or lie down and do
nothing by any authority. Then, difficulty though there be, let us meet
and encounter it. "Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt; nothing so
hard, but search will find it out." Determine that the thing can and shall
be done, and then we shall find the way. The tendency to undue expansion
is unquestionably the chief difficulty.
How to do something, and still not do too much, is the desideratum. Let
each contribute his mite in the way of suggestion. The late Silas Wright,
in a letter to the Chicago convention, contributed his, which was worth
something; and I now contribute mine, which may be worth nothing. At all
events, it will mislead nobody, and therefore will do no harm. I would not
borrow money. I am against an overwhelming, crushing system. Suppose that,
at each session, Congress shall first determine how much money can, for
that year, be spared for improvements; then apportion that sum to the most
important objects. So far all is easy; but how shall we determine which
are the most important? On this question comes the collision of interests.
I shall be slow to acknowledge that your harbor or your river is more
important than mine, and vice versa. To clear this difficulty, let us
have that same statistical information which the gentleman from Ohio [Mr.
Vinton] suggested at the beginning of this session. In that information we
shall have a stern, unbending basis of facts--a basis in no wise subject
to whim, caprice, or local interest. The prelimited amount of means will
save us from doing too much, and the statistics will save us from doing
what we do in wrong places. Adopt and adhere to this course, and, it seems
to me, the difficulty is cleared.