have been more fortunate than myself in their observation of the course of public affairs.  If to these evils be added the combinations and angry contentions to which such a course of things gives rise, with their baleful influences upon the legislation of Congress touching the leading and appropriate duties of the Federal Government, it was but doing justice to the character of our people to expect the severe condemnation of the past which the recent exhibitions of public sentiment has evinced.

Nothing short of a radical change in the action of the Government upon the subject can, in my opinion, remedy the evil.  If, as it would be natural to expect, the States which have been least favored in past appropriations should insist on being redressed in those here after to be made, at the expense of the States which have so largely and disproportionately participated, we have, as matters now stand, but little security that the attempt would do more than change the inequality from one quarter to another.

Thus viewing the subject, I have heretofore felt it my duty to recommend the adoption of some plan for the distribution of the surplus funds, which may at any time remain in the Treasury after the national debt shall have been paid, among the States, in proportion to the number of their Representatives, to be applied by them to objects of internal improvement.

Although this plan has met with favor in some portions of the Union, it has also elicited objections which merit deliberate consideration.  A brief notice of these objections here will not, therefore, I trust, be regarded as out of place.

They rest, as far as they have come to my knowledge, on the following grounds:  first, an objection to the ration of distribution; second, an apprehension that the existence of such a regulation would produce improvident and oppressive taxation to raise the funds for distribution; 3rd, that the mode proposed would lead to the construction of works of a local nature, to the exclusion of such as are general and as would consequently be of a more useful character; and, last, that it would create a discreditable and injurious dependence on the part of the State governments upon the Federal power.

Of those who object to the ration of representatives as the basis of distribution, some insist that the importations of the respective States would constitute one that would be more equitable; and others again, that the extent of their respective territories would furnish a standard which would be more expedient and sufficiently equitable.  The ration of representation presented itself to my mind, and it still does, as one of obvious equity, because of its being the ratio of contribution, whether the funds to be distributed be derived from the customs or from direct taxation.  It does not follow, however, that its adoption is indispensable to the establishment of the system proposed.  There may be considerations appertaining to the subject which would render a departure, to some extent, from the rule of contribution proper.  Nor is it absolutely necessary that the basis of distribution be confined to one ground.  It may, if in the judgment of those whose right it is to fix it it be deemed politic and just to give it that character, have regard to several.