es of Internal Improvements bills containing
appropriations for such objects, inclusive of those for the Cumberland
road and for harbors and light-houses, to the amount of $106,000,000. In
this amount was included authority to the Secretary of the Treasury to
subscribe for the stock of different companies to a great extent, and
the residue was principally for the direct construction of roads by this
Government. In addition to these projects, which had been presented to
the two Houses under the sanction and recommendation of their respective
Committees on Internal Improvements, there were then still pending
before the committees, and in memorials to Congress presented but not
referred, different projects for works of a similar character, the
expense of which can not be estimated with certainty, but must have
exceeded $100,000,000.

Regarding the bill authorizing a subscription to the stock of the
Maysville and Lexington Turnpike Company as the entering wedge of a
system which, however weak at first, might soon become strong enough to
rive the bands of the Union asunder, and believing that if its passage
was acquiesced in by the Executive and the people there would no longer
be any limitation upon the authority of the General Government in
respect to the appropriation of money for such objects, I deemed it an
imperative duty to withhold from it the Executive approval. Although
from the obviously local character of that work I might well have
contented myself with a refusal to approve the bill upon that ground,
yet sensible of the vital importance of the subject, and anxious that
my views and opinions in regard to the whole matter should be fully
understood by Congress and by my constituents, I felt it my duty to go
further. I therefore embraced that early occasion to apprise Congress
that in my opinion the Constitution did not confer upon it the power
to authorize the construction of ordinary roads and canals within the
limits of a State and to say, respectfully, that no bill admitting such
a power could receive my official sanction. I did so in the confident
expectation that the speedy settlement of the public mind upon the whole
subject would be greatly facilitated by the difference between the two
Houses and myself, and that the harmonious action of the several
departments of the Federal Government in regard to it would be
ultimately secured.

So far, at least, as it regards this branch of the subject, my best
hopes