Mr. Chairman, for the purpose of reviewing this message in the least possible time, as well as for the sake of distinctness, I have analyzed its arguments as well as I could, and reduced them to the propositions I have stated.  I have now examined them in detail.  I wish to detain the committee only a little while longer with some general remarks upon the subject of improvements.  That the subject is a difficult one, cannot be denied.  Still it is no more difficult in Congress than in the State Legislatures, in the counties, or in the smallest municipal districts which anywhere exist.  All can recur to instances of this difficulty in the case of county roads, bridges, and the like.  One man is offended because a road passes over his land, and another is offended because it does not pass over his; one is dissatisfied because the bridge for which he is taxed crosses the river on a different road from that which leads from his house to town; another cannot bear that the county should be got in debt for these same roads and bridges; while not a few struggle hard to have roads located over their lands, and then stoutly refuse to let them be opened until they are first paid the damages.  Even between the different wards and streets of towns and cities we find this same wrangling and difficulty.  Now these are no other than the very difficulties against which, and out of which, the President constructs his objections of “inequality,” “speculation,” and “crushing the treasury.”  There is but a single alternative about them:  they are sufficient, or they are not.  If sufficient, they are sufficient out of Congress as well as in it, and there is the end.  We must reject them as insufficient, or lie down and do nothing by any authority.  Then, difficulty though there be, let us meet and encounter it.  “Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt; nothing so hard, but search will find it out.”  Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.  The tendency to undue expansion is unquestionably the chief difficulty.

How to do something, and still not do too much, is the desideratum.  Let each contribute his mite in the way of suggestion.  The late Silas Wright, in a letter to the Chicago convention, contributed his, which was worth something; and I now contribute mine, which may be worth nothing.  At all events, it will mislead nobody, and therefore will do no harm.  I would not borrow money.  I am against an overwhelming, crushing system.  Suppose that, at each session, Congress shall first determine how much money can, for that year, be spared for improvements; then apportion that sum to the most important objects.  So far all is easy; but how shall we determine which are the most important?  On this question comes the collision of interests.  I shall be slow to acknowledge that your harbor or your river is more important than mine, and vice versa.  To clear this difficulty, let us have that same statistical information which