The act incorporating the Bank of the United States was passed in April, 1816.  For the privileges of the charter, the proprietors of the bank were to pay to government a bonus, as it was called, of one million five hundred thousand dollars, in certain instalments.  Government also took seven millions in the stock of the bank.  Early in the next session of Congress, that is, in December, 1816, the honorable member moved, in the House of Representatives, that a committee be appointed to consider the propriety of setting apart this bonus, and also the dividends on the stock belonging to the United States, as a permanent fund for internal improvement.  The committee was appointed, and the honorable member was made its chairman.  He thus originated the plan, and took the lead in its execution.  Shortly afterwards, he reported a bill carrying out the objects for which the committee had been appointed.  This bill provided that the dividends on the seven millions of bank stock belonging to government, and also the whole of the bonus, should be permanently pledged as a fund for constructing roads and canals; and that this fund should be subject to such specific appropriations as Congress might subsequently make.

This was the bill; and this was the first project ever brought forward in Congress for a system of internal improvements.  The bill goes the whole doctrine at a single jump.  The Cumberland Road, it is true, was already in progress; and for that the gentleman had also voted.  But there were, and are now, peculiarities about that particular expenditure which sometimes satisfy scrupulous consciences; but this bill of the gentleman’s, without equivocation or saving clause, without if, or and, or but, occupied the whole ground at once, and announced internal improvement as one of the objects of this government, on a grand and systematic plan.  The bill, Sir, seemed indeed too strong.  It was thought by persons not esteemed extremely jealous of State rights to evince too little regard to the will of the States.  Several gentlemen opposed the measure in that shape, on that account; and among them Colonel Pickering, then one of the Representatives from Massachusetts.  Even Timothy Pickering could not quite sanction, or concur in, the honorable gentleman’s doctrines to their full extent, although he favored the measure in its general character.  He therefore prepared an amendment, as a substitute; and his substitute provided for two very important things not embraced in the original bill:—­

First, that the proportion of the fund to be expended in each State, respectively, should be in proportion to the number of its inhabitants.

Second, that the money should be applied in constructing such roads, canals, and so forth, in the several States, as Congress might direct, with the assent of the State.