erce which does not equally apply to
improvements upon the seaboard for the protection of foreign commerce,
I submit to you whether it may not be safely anticipated that if the
policy were once settled against appropriations by the General
Government for local improvements for the benefit of commerce,
localities requiring expenditures would not, by modes and means clearly
legitimate and proper, raise the fund necessary for such constructions
as the safety or other interests of their commerce might require.

If that can be regarded as a system which in the experience of more than
thirty years has at no time so commanded the public judgment as to give
it the character of a settled policy; which, though it has produced some
works of conceded importance, has been attended with an expenditure
quite disproportionate to their value and has resulted in squandering
large sums upon objects which have answered no valuable purpose, the
interests of all the States require it to be abandoned unless hopes may
be indulged for the future which find no warrant in the past.

With an anxious desire for the completion of the works which are
regarded by all good citizens with sincere interest, I have deemed it my
duty to ask at your hands a deliberate reconsideration of the question,
with a hope that, animated by a desire to promote the permanent and
substantial interests of the country, your wisdom may prove equal to the
task of devising and maturing a plan which, applied to this subject, may
promise something better than constant strife, the suspension of the
powers of local enterprise, the exciting of vain hopes, and the
disappointment of cherished expectations.

In expending the appropriations made by the last Congress several cases
have arisen in relation to works for the improvement of harbors which
involve questions as to the right of soil and jurisdiction, and have
threatened conflict between the authority of the State and General
Governments. The right to construct a breakwater, jetty, or dam would
seem necessarily to carry with it the power to protect and preserve such
constructions. This can only be effectually done by having jurisdiction
over the soil. But no clause of the Constitution is found on which to
rest the claim of the United States to exercise jurisdiction over the
soil of a State except that conferred by the eighth section of the first
article of the Constitution. It is, then, submitted whether, in all
cases where co