Opportunities and temptations to the assumption
of power incompatible with State sovereignty would be increased and
those barriers which resist the tendency of our system toward
consolidation greatly weakened. The officers and agents of the General
Government might not always have the discretion to abstain from
intermeddling with State concerns, and if they did they would not always
escape the suspicion of having done so. Collisions and consequent
irritations would spring up; that harmony which should ever exist
between the General Government and each member of the Confederacy would
be frequently interrupted; a spirit of contention would be engendered
and the dangers of disunion greatly multiplied.
Yet we all know that notwithstanding these grave objections this
dangerous doctrine was at one time apparently proceeding to its final
establishment with fearful rapidity. The desire to embark the Federal
Government in works of internal improvement prevailed in the highest
degree during the first session of the first Congress that I had the
honor to meet in my present situation. When the bill authorizing a
subscription on the part of the United States for stock in the Maysville
and Lexington Turnpike Company passed the two Houses, there had been
reported by the Committees 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.
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