The bill is also liable to a serious objection because of its blending appropriations for numerous objects but few of which agree in their general features.  This necessarily produces the effect of embarrassing Executive action.  Some of the appropriations would receive my sanction if separated from the rest, however much I might deplore the reproduction of a system which for some time past has been permitted to sleep with apparently the acquiescence of the country.  I might particularize the Delaware Breakwater as an improvement which looks to the security from the storms of our extended Atlantic seaboard of the vessels of all the country engaged either in the foreign or the coastwise trade, as well as to the safety of the revenue; but when, in connection with that, the same bill embraces improvements of rivers at points far in the interior, connected alone with the trade of such river and the exertion of mere local influences, no alternative is left me but to use the qualified veto with which the Executive is invested by the Constitution, and to return the bill to the House in which it originated for its ultimate reconsideration and decision.

In sanctioning a bill of the same title with that returned, for the improvement of the Mississippi and its chief tributaries and certain harbors on the Lakes, if I bring myself apparently in conflict with any of the principles herein asserted it will arise on my part exclusively from the want of a just appreciation of localities.  The Mississippi occupies a footing altogether different from the rivers and water courses of the different States.  No one State or any number of States can exercise any other jurisdiction over it than for the punishment of crimes and the service of civil process.  It belongs to no particular State or States, but of common right, by express reservation, to all the States.  It is reserved as a great common highway for the commerce of the whole country.  To have conceded to Louisiana, or to any other State admitted as a new State into the Union, the exclusive jurisdiction, and consequently the right to make improvements and to levy tolls on the segments of the river embraced within its territorial limits, would have been to have disappointed the chief object in the purchase of Louisiana, which was to secure the free use of the Mississippi to all the people of the United States.  Whether levies on commerce were made by a foreign or domestic government would have been equally burdensome and objectionable.  The United States, therefore, is charged with its improvement for the benefit of all, and the appropriation of governmental means to its improvement becomes indispensably necessary for the good of all.

As to the harbors on the Lakes, the act originates no new improvements, but makes appropriations for the continuance of works already begun.