In
this amount was included authority to the Secretary of the Treasury to
subscribe for the stock of different companies to a great extent, and
the residue was principally for the direct construction of roads by this
Government. In addition to these projects, which had been presented to
the two Houses under the sanction and recommendation of their respective
Committees on Internal Improvements, there were then still pending
before the committees, and in memorials to Congress presented but not
referred, different projects for works of a similar character, the
expense of which can not be estimated with certainty, but must have
exceeded $100,000,000.
Regarding the bill authorizing a subscription to the stock of the
Maysville and Lexington Turnpike Company as the entering wedge of a
system which, however weak at first, might soon become strong enough to
rive the bands of the Union asunder, and believing that if its passage
was acquiesced in by the Executive and the people there would no longer
be any limitation upon the authority of the General Government in
respect to the appropriation of money for such objects, I deemed it an
imperative duty to withhold from it the Executive approval.
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