perplexity in 1806 was similar to that of Jackson in 1833,--too much
money in the treasury. The revenue then was fifteen millions; and,
after paying all the expenses of the government and the stipulated
portion of the national debt, there was an obstinate and most
embarrassing surplus. What to do with this irrepressible surplus was
the question then discussed in Mr. Jefferson's Cabinet. The President,
being a free-trader, would naturally have said, Reduce the duties. But
the younger men of the party, who had no pet theories, and
particularly our young Senator, who had just come in from a six weeks'
horseback flounder over bridgeless roads, urged another solution of
the difficulty,--Internal Improvements. But the President was a
strict-constructionist, denied the authority of Congress to vote money
for public works, and was fully committed to that opinion.

Mr. Jefferson yielded. The most beautiful theories will not always
endure the wear and tear of practice. The President, it is true, still
maintained that an amendment to the Constitution ought to precede
appropriations for public works; but he said this very briefly and
without emphasis, while he stated at some length, and with force, the
desirableness of expending the surplus revenue in improving the
country. As time wore on, less and less was said about the amendment,
more and more about the importance of internal improvements; until, at
last, the Republican party, under Clay, Adams, Calhoun, and Rush, went
as far in this business of road-making and canal-digging as Hamilton
himself could have desired. Thus it was that Jefferson rendered true
his own saying, "We are all Federalists, we are all Republicans."
Jefferson yielded, also, on the question of free-trade. There is a
passage of a few lines in Mr. Jefferson's Message of 1806, the year of
Henry Clay's first appearance in Washington, which may be regarded as
the text of half the Kentuckian's speeches, and the inspiration of his