Soon after his entrance into Congress Clay took advanced ground in favor
of building roads, improving water-ways, and constructing canals by the
general government, in order to connect the seaboard States with the
"boundless empire" of the growing West. He became the leader, the
foremost champion, of a system which was bitterly opposed by some of the
ablest statesmen of the time as unauthorized by the Constitution. Clay
triumphed, and during his long public service was the recognized leader
of a system which though opposed at first, has been accepted as a
national policy by both of the great political parties. That he was
actuated by a grand conception of the future destiny of the country, and
the needs of such improvements to insure a more perfect union, his able
speeches on these questions will show. In one he said:--
"Every man who looks at the Constitution in the spirit to entitle him to
the character of statesman, must elevate his views to the height to
which this nation is destined to reach in the rank of nations. We are
not legislating for this moment only, or for the present generation, or
for the present populated limits of the United States; but our acts must
embrace a wider scope,--reaching northward to the Pacific and
southwardly to the river Del Norte. Imagine this extent of territory
with sixty or seventy or a hundred millions of people. The powers which
exist now will exist then; and those which will exist then exist now....
What was the object of the Convention in framing the Constitution? The
leading object was UNION,--Union, then peace. Peace external and
internal, and commerce, but more particularly union and peace, the great
objects of the framers of the Constitution, should be kept steadily in
view in the interpretation of any clause of it; and when it is
susceptible of various interpretation, that construction should be
preferred which tends to promote the objects of the framers of the
Constitution, to the consolidation of the Union.... No man deprecates
more than I do the idea of consolidation; yet between separation and
consolidation, painful as would be the alternative, I should greatly
prefer the latter."
Congress now appropriates yearly for internal improvements a sum far
greater than the entire revenue of the government at the time Clay made
this speech.