Among other acts assuming the power was one passed on the 20th of May, 1826, entitled “An act for improving certain harbors and the navigation of certain rivers and creeks, and for authorizing surveys to be made of certain bays, sounds, and rivers therein mentioned.”  By that act large appropriations were made, which were to be “applied, under the direction of the President of the United States,” to numerous improvements in ten of the States.  This act, passed thirty-seven years after the organisation of the present Government, contained the first appropriation ever made for the improvement of a navigable river, unless it be small appropriations for examinations and surveys in 1820.  During the residue of that Administration many other appropriations of a similar character were made, embracing roads, rivers, harbors, and canals, and objects claiming the aid of Congress multiplied without number.

This was the first breach effected in the barrier which the universal opinion of the framers of the Constitution had for more than thirty years thrown in the way of the assumption of this power by Congress.  The general mind of Congress and the country did not appreciate the distinction taken by President Monroe between the right to appropriate money for an object and the right to apply and expend it without the embarrassment and delay of applications to the State governments.  Probably no instance occurred in which such an application was made, and the flood gates being thus hoisted the principle laid down by him was disregarded, and applications for aid from the Treasury, virtually to make harbors as well as improve them, clear out rivers, cut canals, and construct roads, poured into Congress in torrents until arrested by the veto of President Jackson.  His veto of the Maysville road bill was followed up by his refusal to sign the “Act making appropriations for building light-houses, light-boats, beacons, and monuments, placing buoys, improving harbors, and directing surveys;” “An act authorizing subscriptions for stock in the Louisville and Portland Canal Company;” “An act for the improvement of certain harbors and the navigation of certain rivers;” and, finally, “An act to improve the navigation of the Wabash River.”  In his objections to the act last named he says: 

The desire to embark the Federal Government in works of internal improvement prevailed in the highest degree during the first session of the first Congress that I had the honor to meet in my present situation.  When the bill authorizing a subscription on the part of the United States for stock in the Maysville and Lexington Tumpike Company passed the two Houses, there had been reported by the Committees of Internal Improvements bills containing appropriations for such objects, inclusive of those for the Cumberland road and for harbors and light-houses, to the amount of $106,000,000.  In this amount was included authority to the Secretary of the Treasury to subscribe for