ion, it is
at the same time to be remembered that the conclusions thus deduced
from cotemporaneous construction and long-continued acquiescence are
themselves directly suggestive of limitations of constitutionality, as
well as expediency, regarding the nature and the description of those
aids to navigation which Congress may provide as incident to the revenue
power; for at this point controversy begins, not so much as to the
principle as to its application.

In accordance with long-established legislative usage, Congress may
construct light-houses and beacons and provide, as it does, other means
to prevent shipwrecks on the coasts of the United States. But the
General Government can not go beyond this and make improvements of
rivers and harbors of the nature and to the degree of all the provisions
of the bill of the last session of Congress.

To justify such extended power, it has been urged that if it be
constitutional to appropriate money for the purpose of pointing out,
by the construction of light-houses or beacons, where an obstacle to
navigation exists, it is equally so to remove such obstacle or to avoid
it by the creation of an artificial channel; that if the object be
lawful, then the means adopted solely with reference to the end must
be lawful, and that therefore it is not material, constitutionally
speaking, whether a given obstruction to navigation be indicated for
avoidance or be actually avoided by excavating a new channel; that if
it be a legitimate object of expenditure to preserve a ship from wreck
by means of a beacon or of revenue cutters, it must be not less so
to provide places of safety by the improvement of harbors, or, where
none exist, by their artificial construction; and thence the argument
naturally passes to the propriety of improving rivers for the benefit
of internal navigation, because all these objects are of more or less
importance to the commercial as well as the naval interests of the
United States.

The answer to all this is that the question of opening speedy and easy
communication to and through all parts of the country is substantially
the same, whether done by land or water; that the uses of roads and
canals in facilitating commercial intercourse and uniting by community
of interests the most remote quarters of the country by land
communication are the same in their nature as the uses of navigable
waters; and that therefore the question of the facilities and aids to
be provi