The first position is, that a system of internal improvements would overwhelm the treasury.  That in such a system there is a tendency to undue expansion, is not to be denied.  Such tendency is founded in the nature of the subject.  A member of Congress will prefer voting for a bill which contains an appropriation for his district, to voting for one which does not; and when a bill shall be expanded till every district shall be provided for, that it will be too greatly expanded is obvious.  But is this any more true in Congress than in a State Legislature?  If a member of Congress must have an appropriation for his district, so a member of a Legislature must have one for his county.  And if one will overwhelm the national treasury, so the other will overwhelm the State treasury.  Go where we will, the difficulty is the same.  Allow it to drive us from the halls of Congress, and it will, just as easily, drive us from the State Legislatures.  Let us, then, grapple with it, and test its strength.  Let us, judging of the future by the past, ascertain whether there may not be, in the discretion of Congress, a sufficient power to limit and restrain this expansive tendency within reasonable and proper bounds.  The President himself values the evidence of the past.  He tells us that at a certain point of our history more than two hundred millions of dollars had been applied for to make improvements; and this he does to prove that the treasury would be overwhelmed by such a system.  Why did he not tell us how much was granted?  Would not that have been better evidence?  Let us turn to it, and see what it proves.  In the message the President tells us that “during the four succeeding years embraced by the administration of President Adams, the power not only to appropriate money, but to apply it, under the direction and authority of the General Government, as well to the construction of roads as to the improvement of harbors and rivers, was fully asserted and exercised.”  This, then, was the period of greatest enormity.  These, if any, must have been the days of the two hundred millions.  And how much do you suppose was really expended for improvements during that four years?  Two hundred millions?  One hundred?  Fifty?  Ten?  Five?  No, sir; less than two millions.  As shown by authentic documents, the expenditures on improvements during 1825, 1826, 1827, and 1828 amounted to one million eight hundred and seventy-nine thousand six hundred and twenty-seven dollars and one cent.  These four years were the period of Mr. Adams’s administration, nearly and substantially.  This fact shows that when the power to make improvements “was fully asserted and exercised,” the Congress did keep within reasonable limits; and what has been done, it seems to me, can be done again.