on of
Congress; for, while by no means insensible of the arduousness of the
task thus undertaken by me, I conceived that the two Houses were
entitled to an exposition of the considerations which had induced
dissent on my part from their conclusions in this instance.

The great constitutional question of the power of the General Government
in relation to internal improvements has been the subject of earnest
difference of opinion at every period of the history of the United
States. Annual and special messages of successive Presidents have been
occupied with it, sometimes in remarks on the general topic and
frequently in objection to particular bills. The conflicting sentiments
of eminent statesmen, expressed in Congress or in conventions called
expressly to devise, if possible, some plan calculated to relieve the
subject of the embarrassments with which it is environed, while they
have directed public attention strongly to the magnitude of the
interests involved, have yet left unsettled the limits, not merely of
expediency, but of constitutional power, in relation to works of this
class by the General Government.

What is intended by the phrase "internal improvements"? What does it
embrace and what exclude? No such language is found in the Constitution.
Not only is it not an expression of ascertainable constitutional power,
but it has no sufficient exactness of meaning to be of any value as the
basis of a safe conclusion either of constitutional law or of practical
statesmanship.

President John Quincy Adams, in claiming on one occasion, after his
retirement from office, the authorship of the idea of introducing into
the administration of the affairs of the General Government "a permanent
and regular system" of internal improvements, speaks of it as a system
by which "the whole Union would have been checkered over with railroads
and canals," affording "high wages and constant employment to hundreds
of thousands of laborers;" and he places it in express contrast with the
construction of such works by the legislation of the States and by
private enterprise.

It is quite obvious that if there be any constitutional power which
authorizes the construction of "railroads and canals" by Congress, the
same power must comprehend turnpikes and ordinary carriage roads; nay, it
must extend to the construction of bridges, to the draining of marshes,
to the erection of levees, to the construction of canals of irrigation;
in a word,