The last report made by Captain Whipple, dated on the 13th September last, has been submitted to Congress by the Secretary of War, and to this I would refer for information, which is, upon the whole, favorable, in relation to the present condition of the channel through the St. Clair flats.

2.  But the far more important question is, Does Congress possess the power under the Constitution to deepen the channels of rivers and to create and improve harbors for purposes of commerce?

The question of the constitutional power of Congress to construct internal improvements within the States has been so frequently and so elaborately discussed that it would seem useless on this occasion to repeat or to refute at length arguments which have been so often advanced.  For my own opinions on this subject I might refer to President Polk’s carefully considered message of the 15th December, 1847, addressed to the House of Representatives whilst I was a member of his Cabinet.

The power to pass the bill in question, if it exist at all, must be derived from the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes.”

The power “to regulate:”  Does this ever embrace the power to create or to construct?  To say that it does is to confound the meaning of words of well-known signification.  The word “regulate” has several shades of meaning, according to its application to different subjects, but never does it approach the signification of creative power.  The regulating power necessarily presupposes the existence of something to be regulated.  As applied to commerce, it signifies, according to the lexicographers, “to subject to rules or restrictions, as to regulate trade,” etc.  The Constitution itself is its own best expounder of the meaning of words employed by its framers.  Thus, Congress have the power “to coin money.”  This is the creative power.  Then immediately follows the power “to regulate the value thereof “—­that is, of the coined money thus brought into existence.  The words “regulate,” “regulation,” and “regulations” occur several times in the Constitution, but always with this subordinate meaning.  Thus, after the creative power “to raise and support armies” and “to provide and maintain a navy” had been conferred upon Congress, then follows the power “to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces” thus called into being.  So the Constitution, acting upon the self-evident fact that “commerce with foreign nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes” already existed, conferred upon Congress the power “to regulate” this commerce.  Thus, according to Chief Justice Marshall, the power to regulate commerce “is the power to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed.”  And Mr. Madison, in his veto message of the 3d March, 1817, declares that—­