The convenience and
safety of this commerce have led to the gradual extension of these
expenditures; to the erection of light-houses, the placing, planting,
and sinking of buoys, beacons, and piers, and to the removal of partial
and temporary obstructions in our navigable rivers and in the harbors
upon our Great Lakes as well as on the seaboard. Although I have
expressed to Congress my apprehension that these expenditures have
sometimes been extravagant and disproportionate to the advantages to be
derived from them, I have not felt it to be my duty to refuse my assent
to bills containing them, and have contented myself to follow in this
respect in the footsteps of all my predecessors. Sensible, however, from
experience and observation of the great abuses to which the unrestricted
exercise of this authority by Congress was exposed, I have prescribed a
limitation for the government of my own conduct by which expenditures of
this character are confined to places below the ports of entry or
delivery established by law. I am very sensible that this restriction is
not as satisfactory as could be desired, and that much embarrassment may
be caused to the executive department in its execution by appropriations
for remote and not well-understood objects.
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