ch shall accrue from and after the 15th day of
August, 1789, in the necessary support, maintenance, and repairs of
all light-houses, beacons, buoys, and public piers erected, placed, or
sunk before the passing of this act at the entrance of or within any
bay, inlet, harbor, or port of the United States, for rendering the
navigation thereof easy and safe, shall be defrayed out of the Treasury
of the United States: _Provided, nevertheless_, That none of the said
expenses shall continue to be so defrayed after the expiration of one
year from the day aforesaid unless such light-houses, beacons, buoys,
and public piers shall in the meantime be ceded to and vested in the
United States by the State or States, respectively, in which the same
may be, together with the lands and tenements thereunto belonging and
together with the jurisdiction of the same.

Acts containing appropriations for this class of public works were
passed in 1791, 1792, 1793, and so on from year to year down to the
present time; and the tenor of these acts, when examined with reference
to other parts of the subject, is worthy of special consideration.

It is a remarkable fact that for a period of more than thirty years
after the adoption of the Constitution all appropriations of this class
were confined, with scarcely an apparent exception, to the construction
of light-houses, beacons, buoys, and public piers and the stakage of
channels; to render navigation "safe and easy," it is true, but only
by indicating to the navigator obstacles in his way, not by removing
those obstacles nor in any other respect changing, artificially, the
preexisting natural condition of the earth and sea. It is obvious,
however, that works of art for the removal of natural impediments to
navigation, or to prevent their formation, or for supplying harbors
where these do not exist, are also means of rendering navigation safe
and easy, and may in supposable cases be the most efficient, as well as
the most economical, of such means. Nevertheless, it is not until the
year 1824 that in an act to improve the navigation of the rivers Ohio
and Mississippi and in another act making appropriations for deepening
the channel leading into the harbor of Presque Isle, on Lake Erie, and
for repairing Plymouth Beach, in Massachusetts Bay, we have any example
of an appropriation for the improvement of harbors in the nature of
those provided for in the bill returned by me t