is expressly for internal improvements or education, without qualification as to the kind of improvements, and therefore in express violation of the principle maintained in my objections to the turnpike-road bill above referred to.  The latter appropriation is more broad, and gives the money to be applied to any local purpose whatsoever.  It will not be denied that under the provisions of the bill a portion of the money might have been applied to making the very road to which the bill of 1830 had reference, and must of course come within the scope of the same principle.  If the money of the United States can not be applied to local purposes through its own agents, as little can it be permitted to be thus expended through the agency of the State governments.

It has been supposed that with all the reductions in our revenue which could be speedily effected by Congress without injury to the substantial interests of the country there might be for some years to come a surplus of moneys in the Treasury, and that there was in principle no objection to returning them to the people by whom they were paid.  As the literal accomplishment of such an object is obviously impracticable, it was thought admissible, as the nearest approximation to it, to hand them over to the State governments, the more immediate representatives of the people, to be by them applied to the benefit of those to whom they properly belonged.  The principle and the object were to return to the people an unavoidable surplus of revenue which might have been paid by them under a system which could not at once be abandoned, but even this resource, which at one time seemed to be almost the only alternative to save the General Government from grasping unlimited power over internal improvements, was suggested with doubts of its constitutionality.

But this bill assumes a new principle.  Its object is not to return to the people an unavoidable surplus of revenue paid in by them, but to create a surplus for distribution among the States.  It seizes the entire proceeds of one source of revenue and sets them apart as a surplus, making it necessary to raise the moneys for supporting the Government and meeting the general charges from other sources.  It even throws the entire land system upon the customs for its support, and makes the public lands a perpetual charge upon the Treasury.  It does not return to the people moneys accidentally or unavoidably paid by them to the Government, by which they are not wanted, but compels the people to pay moneys into the Treasury for the mere purpose of creating a surplus for distribution to their State governments.  If this principle be once admitted, it is not difficult to perceive to what consequences it may lead.  Already this bill, by throwing the land system on the revenues from imports for support, virtually distributes among the States a part of those revenues.  The proportion may be increased from time to time, without any departure