WASHINGTON, _August 3, 1846_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I have considered the bill entitled "An act making appropriations for
the improvement of certain harbors and rivers" with the care which
its importance demands, and now return the same to the House of
Representatives, in which it originated, with my objections to its
becoming a law. The bill proposes to appropriate $1,378,450 to be
applied to more than forty distinct and separate objects of improvement.
On examining its provisions and the variety of objects of improvement
which it embraces, many of them of a local character, it is difficult to
conceive, if it shall be sanctioned and become a law, what practical
constitutional restraint can hereafter be imposed upon the most extended
system of internal improvements by the Federal Government in all parts
of the Union. The Constitution has not, in my judgment, conferred upon
the Federal Government the power to construct works of internal
improvement within the States, or to appropriate money from the Treasury
for that purpose. That this bill assumes for the Federal Government the
right to exercise this power can not, I think, be doubted. The approved
course of the Government and the deliberately expressed judgment of the
people have denied the existence of such a power under the Constitution.
Several of my predecessors have denied its existence in the most solemn
forms.
The general proposition that the Federal Government does not possess
this power is so well settled and has for a considerable period been so
generally acquiesced in that it is not deemed necessary to reiterate the
arguments by which it is sustained. Nor do I deem it necessary, after
the full and elaborate discussions which have taken place before the
country on this subject, to do more than to state the general
considerations which have satisfied me of the unconstitutionality and
inexpediency of the exercise of such a power.
It is not questioned that the Federal Government is one of limited
powers. Its powers are such, and such only, as are expressly granted in
the Constitution or are properly incident to the expressly granted
powers and necessary to their execution. In determining whether a given
power has been granted a sound rule of construction has been laid down
by Mr. Madison. That rule is that--
Whenever a question arises concerning a particular power, the first
question is whether the power be expressed in the Constitution. If it
be, the question is decided. If it be not expressed, the next inquiry
must be whether it is properly an incident to an expressed power and
necessary to its execution. If it be, it may be exercised by Congress.
If it be not, Congress can not exercise it.
It is not pretended that there is any express grant in the Constitution
conferring on Congress the power in question. Is it, then, an incidental
power necessary and proper for the execution of any of the granted
powers? All the granted powers, it is confidently affirmed, may be
effectually executed without the aid of such an incident. "A power, to
be incidental, must not be exercised for ends which make it a principal
or substantive power, independent of the principal power to which it is
an incident." It is not enough that it may be regarded by Congress as
_convenient_ or that its exercise would advance the public weal. It must
be _necessary and proper_ to the execution of the principal expressed
power to which it is an incident, and without which such principal power
can not be carried into effect. The whole frame of the Federal
Constitution proves that the Government which it creates was intended
to be one of limited and specified powers. A construction of the
Constitution so broad as that by which the power in question is defended
tends imperceptibly to a consolidation of power in a Government intended
by its framers to be thus limited in its authority. "The obvious
tendency and inevitable result of a consolidation of the States into one
sovereignty would be to transform the republican system of the United
States into a monarchy." To guard against the assumption of all powers
which encroach upon the reserved sovereignty of the States, and which
consequently tend to consolidation, is the duty of all the true friends
of our political system. That the power in question is not properly an
incident to any of the granted powers I am fully satisfied; but if there
were doubts on this subject, experience has demonstrated the wisdom of
the rule that all the functionaries of the Federal Government should
abstain from the exercise of all questionable or doubtful powers. If an
enlargement of the powers of the Federal Government should be deemed
proper, it is safer and wiser to appeal to the States and the people
in the mode prescribed by the Constitution for the grant desired than
to assume its exercise without an amendment of the Constitution.
If Congress does not possess the general power to construct works of
internal improvement within the States, or to appropriate money from the
Treasury for that purpose, what is there to exempt some, at least, of
the objects of appropriation included in this bill from the operation of
the general rule? This bill assumes the existence of the power, and in
some of its provisions asserts the principle that Congress may exercise
it as fully as though the appropriations which it proposes were
applicable to the construction of roads and canals. If there be a
distinction in principle, it is not perceived, and should be clearly
defined. Some of the objects of appropriation contained in this bill are
local in their character, and lie within the limits of a single State;
and though in the language of the bill they are called _harbors_, they
are not connected with foreign commerce, nor are they places of refuge
or shelter for our Navy or commercial marine on the ocean or lake
shores. To call the mouth of a creek or a shallow inlet on our coast
a harbor can not confer the authority to expend the public money in
its improvement. Congress have exercised the power coeval with the
Constitution of establishing light-houses, beacons, buoys, and piers on
our ocean and lake shores for the purpose of rendering navigation safe
and easy and of affording protection and shelter for our Navy and
other shipping. These are safeguards placed in existing channels of
navigation. After the long acquiescence of the Government through all
preceding Administrations, I am not disposed to question or disturb the
authority to make appropriations for such purposes.
When we advance a step beyond this point, and, in addition to the
establishment and support, by appropriations from the Treasury, of
lighthouses, beacons, buoys, piers, and other improvements within the
bays, inlets, and harbors on our ocean and lake coasts immediately
connected with our foreign commerce, attempt to make improvements in the
interior at points unconnected with foreign commerce, and where they are
not needed for the protection and security of our Navy and commercial
marine, the difficulty arises in drawing a line beyond which
appropriations may not be made by the Federal Government.
One of my predecessors, who saw the evil consequences of the system
proposed to be revived by this bill, attempted to define this line by
declaring that "expenditures of this character" should be "confined
_below_ the ports of entry or delivery established by law." Acting on
this restriction, he withheld his sanction from a bill which had passed
Congress "to improve the navigation of the Wabash River." He was at the
same time "sensible that this restriction was not as satisfactory as
could be desired, and that much embarrassment may be caused to the
executive department in its execution, by appropriations for remote and
not well-understood objects." This restriction, it was soon found, was
subject to be evaded and rendered comparatively useless in checking the
system of improvements which it was designed to arrest, in consequence
of the facility with which ports of entry and delivery may be
established by law upon the upper waters, and in some instances almost
at the head springs of some of the most unimportant of our rivers, and
at points on our coast possessing no commercial importance and not used
as places of refuge and safety by our Navy and other shipping. Many of
the ports of entry and delivery now authorized by law, so far as foreign
commerce is concerned, exist only in the statute books. No entry of
foreign goods is ever made and no duties are ever collected at them. No
exports of American products bound for foreign countries ever clear from
them. To assume that their existence in the statute book as ports of
entry or delivery warrants expenditures on the waters leading to them,
which would be otherwise unauthorized, would be to assert the
proposition that the lawmaking power may ingraft new provisions on the
Constitution. If the restriction is a sound one, it can only apply to
the bays, inlets, and rivers connected with or leading to such, ports as
actually have foreign commerce--ports at which foreign importations
arrive in bulk, paying the duties charged by law, and from which exports
are made to foreign countries. It will be found by applying the
restriction thus understood to the bill under consideration that it
contains appropriations for more than twenty objects of internal
improvement, called in the bill _harbors_, at places which have never
been declared by law either ports of entry or delivery, and at which,
as appears from the records of the Treasury, there has never been an
arrival of foreign merchandise, and from which there has never been a
vessel cleared for a foreign country. It will be found that many of
these works are new, and at places for the improvement of which
appropriations are now for the first time proposed. It will be found
also that the bill contains appropriations for rivers upon which there
not only exists no foreign commerce, but upon which there has not been
established even a paper port of entry, and for the mouths of creeks,
denominated harbors, which if improved can benefit only the particular
neighborhood in which they are situated. It will be found, too, to
contain appropriations the expenditure of which will only have the
effect of improving one place at the expense of the local natural
advantages of another in its vicinity. Should this bill become a law,
the same _principle_ which authorizes the appropriations which it
proposes to make would also authorize similar appropriations for the
improvement of all the other bays, inlets, and creeks, which may with
equal propriety be called harbors, and of all the rivers, important or
unimportant, in every part of the Union. To sanction the bill with such
provisions would be to concede the _principle_ that the Federal
Government possesses the power to expend the public money in a general
system of internal improvements, limited in its extent only by the
ever-varying discretion of successive Congresses and successive
Executives. It would be to efface and remove the limitations and
restrictions of power which the Constitution has wisely provided to
limit the authority and action of the Federal Government to a few
well-defined and specified objects. Besides these objections, the
practical evils which must flow from the exercise on the part of the
Federal Government of the powers asserted in this bill impress my mind
with a grave sense of my duty to avert them from the country as far as
my constitutional action may enable me to do so.
It not only leads to a consolidation of power in the Federal Government
at the expense of the rightful authority of the States, but its
inevitable tendency is to embrace objects for the expenditure of the
public money which are local in their character, benefiting but few at
the expense of the common Treasury of the whole. It will engender
sectional feelings and prejudices calculated to disturb the harmony of
the Union. It will destroy the harmony which should prevail in our
legislative councils.
It will produce combinations of local and sectional interests, strong
enough when united to carry propositions for appropriations of public
money which could not of themselves, and standing alone, succeed, and
can not fail to lead to wasteful and extravagant expenditures.
It must produce a disreputable scramble for the public money, by the
conflict which is inseparable from such a system between local and
individual interests and the general interest of the whole. It is unjust
to those States which have with their own means constructed their own
internal improvements to make from the common Treasury appropriations
for similar improvements in other States.
In its operation it will be oppressive and unjust toward those States
whose representatives and people either deny or doubt the existence of
the power or think its exercise inexpedient, and who, while they equally
contribute to the Treasury, can not consistently with their opinions
engage in a general competition for a share of the public money. Thus
a large portion of the Union, in numbers and in geographical extent,
contributing its equal proportion of taxes to the support of the
Government, would under the operation of such a system be compelled to
see the national treasure--the common stock of all--unequally disbursed,
and often improvidently wasted for the advantage of small sections,
instead of being applied to the great national purposes in which all
have a common interest, and for which alone the power to collect the
revenue was given. Should the system of internal improvements proposed
prevail, all these evils will multiply and increase with the increase of
the number of the States and the extension of the geographical limits of
the settled portions of our country. With the increase of our numbers
and the extension of our settlements the local objects demanding
appropriations of the public money for their improvement will be
proportionately increased. In each case the expenditure of the public
money would confer benefits, direct or indirect, only on a section,
while these sections would become daily less in comparison with the
whole.
The wisdom of the framers of the Constitution in withholding power over
such objects from the Federal Government and leaving them to the local
governments of the States becomes more and more manifest with every
year's experience of the operations of our system.
In a country of limited extent, with but few such objects of expenditure
(if the form of government permitted it), a common treasury might be
used for their improvement with much less inequality and injustice than
in one of the vast extent which ours now presents in population and
territory. The treasure of the world would hardly be equal to the
improvement of every bay, inlet, creek, and river in our country which
might be supposed to promote the agricultural, manufacturing, or
commercial interests of a neighborhood.
The Federal Constitution was wisely adapted in its provisions to any
expansion of our limits and population, and with the advance of the
confederacy of the States in the career of national greatness it becomes
the more apparent that the harmony of the Union and the equal justice to
which all its parts are entitled require that the Federal Government
should confine its action within the limits prescribed by the
Constitution to its power and authority. Some of the provisions of this
bill are not subject to the objections stated, and did they stand alone
I should not feel it to be my duty to withhold my approval.
If no constitutional objections existed to the bill, there are others of
a serious nature which deserve some consideration. It appropriates
between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 for objects which are of no pressing
necessity, and this is proposed at a time when the country is engaged in
a foreign war, and when Congress at its present session has authorized a
loan or the issue of Treasury notes to defray the expenses of the war,
to be resorted to if the "exigencies of the Government shall require
it." It would seem to be the dictate of wisdom under such circumstances
to husband our means, and not to waste them on comparatively unimportant
objects, so that we may reduce the loan or issue of Treasury notes which
may become necessary to the smallest practicable sum. It would seem to
be wise, too, to abstain from such expenditures with a view to avoid the
accumulation of a large public debt, the existence of which would be
opposed to the interests of our people as well as to the genius of our
free institutions.
Should this bill become a law, the principle which it establishes will
inevitably lead to large and annually increasing appropriations and
drains upon the Treasury, for it is not to be doubted that numerous
other localities not embraced in its provisions, but quite as much
entitled to the favor of the Government as those which are embraced,
will demand, through their representatives in Congress, to be placed on
an equal footing with them. With such an increase of expenditure must
necessarily follow either an increased public debt or increased burdens
upon the people by taxation to supply the Treasury with the means of
meeting the accumulated demands upon it.
With profound respect for the opinions of Congress, and ever anxious, as
far as I can consistently with my responsibility to our common
constituents, to cooperate with them in the discharge of our respective
duties, it is with unfeigned regret that I find myself constrained, for
the reasons which I have assigned, to withhold my approval from this
bill.