It will be seen that in this extract the power to make improvements is not directly mentioned; but by examining the context, both of Kent and Story, it will be seen that the power mentioned in the extract and the power to make improvements are regarded as identical.  It is not to be denied that many great and good men have been against the power; but it is insisted that quite as many, as great and as good, have been for it; and it is shown that, on a full survey of the whole, Chancellor Kent was of opinion that the arguments of the latter were vastly superior.  This is but the opinion of a man; but who was that man?  He was one of the ablest and most learned lawyers of his age, or of any age.  It is no disparagement to Mr. Polk, nor indeed to any one who devotes much time to politics, to be placed far behind Chancellor Kent as a lawyer.  His attitude was most favorable to correct conclusions.  He wrote coolly, and in retirement.  He was struggling to rear a durable monument of fame; and he well knew that truth and thoroughly sound reasoning were the only sure foundations.  Can the party opinion of a party President on a law question, as this purely is, be at all compared or set in opposition to that of such a man, in such an attitude, as Chancellor Kent?  This constitutional question will probably never be better settled than it is, until it shall pass under judicial consideration; but I do think no man who is clear on the questions of expediency need feel his conscience much pricked upon this.

Mr. Chairman, the President seems to think that enough may be done, in the way of improvements, by means of tonnage duties under State authority, with the consent of the General Government.  Now I suppose this matter of tonnage duties is well enough in its own sphere.  I suppose it may be efficient, and perhaps sufficient, to make slight improvements and repairs in harbors already in use and not much out of repair.  But if I have any correct general idea of it, it must be wholly inefficient for any general beneficent purposes of improvement.  I know very little, or rather nothing at all, of the practical matter of levying and collecting tonnage duties; but I suppose one of its principles must be to lay a duty for the improvement of any particular harbor upon the tonnage coming into that harbor; to do otherwise—­to collect money in one harbor, to be expended on improvements in another—­would be an extremely aggravated form of that inequality which the President so much deprecates.  If I be right in this, how could we make any entirely new improvement by means of tonnage duties?  How make a road, a canal, or clear a greatly obstructed river?  The idea that we could involves the same absurdity as the Irish bull about the new boots.  “I shall niver git ’em on,” says Patrick, “till I wear ’em a day or two, and stretch ’em a little.”  We shall never make a canal by tonnage duties until it shall already have been made awhile, so the tonnage can get into it.