the stock of different companies to a great extent, and the residue was principally for the direct construction of roads by this Government, in addition to these projects, which had been presented to the two Houses under the sanction and recommendation of their respective Committees on Internal Improvements, there were then still pending before the committees and in memorials to Congress presented but not referred different projects for works of a similar character, the expense of which can not be estimated with certainty, but must have exceeded $100,000,000.

Thus, within the brief period of less than ten years after the commencement of internal improvements by the General Government the sum asked for from the Treasury for various projects amounted to more than $200,000,000.  President Jackson’s powerful and disinterested appeals to his country appear to have put down forever the assumption of power to make roads and cut canals, and to have checked the prevalent disposition to bring all rivers in any degree navigable within the control of the General Government.  But an immense field for expending the public money and increasing the power and patronage of this Government was left open in the concession of even a limited power of Congress to improve harbors and rivers—­a field which millions will not fertilize to the satisfaction of those local and speculating interests by which these projects are in general gotten up.  There can not be a just and equal distribution of public burdens and benefits under such a system, nor can the States be relieved from the danger of fatal encroachment, nor the United States from the equal danger of consolidation, otherwise than by an arrest of the system and a return to the doctrines and practices which prevailed during the first thirty years of the Government.

How forcibly does the history of this subject illustrate the tendency of power to concentration in the hands of the General Government.  The power to improve their own harbors and rivers was clearly reserved to the States, who were to be aided by tonnage duties levied and collected by themselves, with the consent of Congress.  For thirty-four years improvements were carried on under that system, and so careful was Congress not to interfere, under any implied power, with the soil or jurisdiction of the States that they did not even assume the power to erect lighthouses or build piers without first purchasing the ground, with the consent of the States, and obtaining jurisdiction over it.  At length, after the lapse of thirty-three years, an act is passed providing for the examination of certain obstructions at the mouth of one or two harbors almost unknown.  It is followed by acts making small appropriations for the removal of those obstructions.  The obstacles interposed by President Monroe, after conceding the power to appropriate, were soon swept away.  Congress virtually assumed jurisdiction of the soil and waters of the States,