The applications for the construction of roads and canals which were
formerly multiplied upon your files are no longer presented, and we have
good reason to infer that the current of public sentiment has become
so decided against the pretension as effectually to discourage its
reassertion. So thinking, I derive the greatest satisfaction from the
conviction that thus much at least has been secured upon this important
and embarrassing subject.
From attempts to appropriate the national funds to objects which are
confessedly of a local character we can not, I trust, have anything
further to apprehend. My views in regard to the expediency of making
appropriations for works which are claimed to be of a national character
and prosecuted under State authority--assuming that Congress have the
right to do so--were stated in my annual message to Congress in 1830,
and also in that containing my objections to the Maysville road bill.
So thoroughly convinced am I that no such appropriations ought to
be made by Congress until a suitable constitutional provision is
made upon the subject, and so essential do I regard the point to the
highest interests of our country, that I could not consider myself as
discharging my duty to my constituents in giving the Executive sanction
to any bill containing such an appropriation.
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