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