aving considered the bill this day presented to me entitled "An act
to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements,"
and which sets apart and pledges funds "for constructing roads and
canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to
facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among
the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive the
means and provisions for the common defense," I am constrained by
the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the
Constitution of the United States to return it with that objection
to the House of Representatives, in which it originated.

The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated
in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it
does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is
among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation
within the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into
execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the
Government of the United States.

"The power to regulate commerce among the several States" can not
include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the
navigation of water courses in order to facilitate, promote, and secure
such a commerce without a latitude of construction departing from the
ordinary import of the terms strengthened by the known inconveniences
which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.

To refer the power in question to the clause "to provide for the common
defense and general welfare" would be contrary to the established and
consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful
enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper.
Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to
Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and
limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms "common
defense and general welfare" embracing every object and act within the
purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting
both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not
specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being
expressly declared "that the Constitution of the United States and laws
made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and
the judges of every State