be levied by the State was reasonable and where the object of improvement was one of importance.  The funds required for the improvement of harbors and rivers may be raised in this mode, as was done in the earlier periods of the Government, and thus avoid a resort to a strained construction of the Constitution not warranted by its letter.  If direct appropriations be made of the money in the Federal Treasury for such purposes, the expenditures will be unequal and unjust.  The money in the Federal Treasury is paid by a tax on the whole people of the United States, and if applied to the purposes of improving harbors and rivers it will be partially distributed and be expended for the advantage of particular States, sections, or localities at the expense of others.

By returning to the early and approved construction of the Constitution and to the practice under it this inequality and injustice will be avoided and at the same time all the really important improvements be made, and, as our experience has proved, be better made and at less cost than they would be by the agency of officers of the United States.  The interests benefited by these improvements, too, would bear the cost of making them, upon the same principle that the expenses of the Post-Office establishment have always been defrayed by those who derive benefits from it.  The power of appropriating money from the Treasury for such improvements was not claimed or exercised for more than thirty years after the organization of the Government in 1789, when a more latitudinous construction was indicated, though it was not broadly asserted and exercised until 1825.  Small appropriations were first made in 1820 and 1821 for surveys.  An act was passed on the 3d of March, 1823, authorizing the President to “cause an examination and survey to be made of the obstructions between the harbor of Gloucester and the harbor of Squam, in the State of Massachusetts,” and of “the entrance of the harbor of the port of Presque Isle, in Pennsylvania,” with a view to their removal, and a small appropriation was made to pay the necessary expenses.  This appears to have been the commencement of harbor improvements by Congress, thirty-four years after the Government went into operation under the present Constitution.  On the 30th of April, 1824, an act was passed making an appropriation of $30,000, and directing “surveys and estimates to be made of the routes of such roads and canals” as the President “may deem of national importance in a commercial or military point of view or necessary for the transportation of the mails.”  This act evidently looked to the adoption of a general system of internal improvements, to embrace roads and canals as well as harbors and rivers.  On the 26th May, 1824, an act was passed making appropriations for “deepening the channel leading into the harbor of Presque Isle, in the State of Pennsylvania,” and to “repair Plymouth Beach, in the State of Massachusetts, and thereby prevent the harbor at that place from being destroyed.”