conclusion from all this is that if the nation refuse to make improvements of the more general kind because their benefits may be somewhat local, a State may for the same reason refuse to make an improvement of a local kind because its benefits may be somewhat general.  A State may well say to the nation, “If you will do nothing for me, I will do nothing for you.”  Thus it is seen that if this argument of “inequality” is sufficient anywhere, it is sufficient everywhere, and puts an end to improvements altogether.  I hope and believe that if both the nation and the States would, in good faith, in their respective spheres do what they could in the way of improvements, what of inequality might be produced in one place might be compensated in another, and the sum of the whole might not be very unequal.

But suppose, after all, there should be some degree of inequality.  Inequality is certainly never to be embraced for its own sake; but is every good thing to be discarded which may be inseparably connected with some degree of it?  If so, we must discard all government.  This Capitol is built at the public expense, for the public benefit; but does any one doubt that it is of some peculiar local advantage to the property-holders and business people of Washington?  Shall we remove it for this reason?  And if so, where shall we set it down, and be free from the difficulty?  To make sure of our object, shall we locate it nowhere, and have Congress hereafter to hold its sessions, as the loafer lodged, “in spots about”?  I make no allusion to the present President when I say there are few stronger cases in this world of “burden to the many and benefit to the few,” of “inequality,” than the Presidency itself is by some thought to be.  An honest laborer digs coal at about seventy cents a day, while the President digs abstractions at about seventy dollars a day.  The coal is clearly worth more than the abstractions, and yet what a monstrous inequality in the prices!  Does the President, for this reason, propose to abolish the Presidency?  He does not, and he ought not.  The true rule, in determining to embrace or reject anything, is not whether it have any evil in it, but whether it have more of evil than of good.  There are few things wholly evil or wholly good.  Almost everything, especially of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.  On this principle the President, his friends, and the world generally act on most subjects.  Why not apply it, then, upon this question?  Why, as to improvements, magnify the evil, and stoutly refuse to see any good in them?

Mr. Chairman, on the third position of the message the constitutional question—­I have not much to say.  Being the man I am, and speaking, where I do, I feel that in any attempt at an original constitutional argument I should not be and ought not to be listened to patiently.  The ablest and the best of men have gone over the whole ground long ago.  I shall attempt but little more than a brief notice of what some of them have said.  In relation to Mr. Jefferson’s views, I read from Mr. Polk’s veto message: