1909.] HAUPT— NATION AND THE WATERWAYS. 57 



left to the joint action of states and individuals ; but what neither of these, 

 separately or conjoined were able to accomplish, that and that only, was the 

 province of the federal government." 



In the application of this principle as construed under the Con- 

 stitution is it asserted that the recent practice of appropriating pub- 

 lic moneys for projects which are essentially and indisputably de- 

 signed to benefit local and personal interests is radically wrong. 

 This attitude was firmly maintained by many of our Presidents 

 from Washington to the present time. 



Thomas Jefferson, long president of this distinguished society, 

 who was the first Secretary of State, under the Constitution, and 

 also vice-president from March 4, 1797, to 1801 and President of 

 the United States for the two following terms during the formative 

 days of the Republic, in his sixth annual message to Congress, 

 dated December 2, 1806, refers to the prospective plethora of 

 income from imposts and suggests the desirability of expending a 

 portion of these funds upon public improvements but states em- 

 phatically that it will require an amendment to the Constitution as 

 it is not authorized under the powers vested in Congress. He 

 recommended the abolition of the imposts on the necessary articles 

 of trade and their continuance on foreign luxuries, appealing to 

 the patriotism of those who were able to pay for their use that the 

 revenues might be applied 



" To the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals and 

 such other objects of public improvements as it may be thought proper to 

 add to the constitutional enumeration of the federal powers. By these 

 operations new channels of communication will be opened between the 

 states, the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified' 

 and their union be cemented by indissoluble ties. . . . The subject is now 

 proposed for the consideration of Congress, because, if approved by the time 

 the state legislatures shall have deliberated on this extension of the federal 

 trusts, and the laws shall be passed and other arrangements made for their 

 execution, the necessary funds will be on hand without employment. I 

 suppose an amendment to the Constitution, by consent of the states, necessary, 

 because the objects now recommended are not among those enumerated in 

 the Constitution, and to which it permits the public pioneys to be applied." 



So that as the Constitution has never been thus amended it 

 would appear that many of the appropriations which have been 

 made from the public treasury are without warrant in law. 



