cost of carriage to be shared between seller and the buyer, result is
that the New Orleans merchant sold his sugar a little dearer, and the
people of Buffalo sweetened their coffee a little cheaper, than
before,--a benefit resulting from the canal, not to Illinois, where the
canal is, but to Louisiana and New York, where it is not. In other
transactions Illinois will, of course, have her share, and perhaps the
larger share too, of the benefits of the canal; but this instance of the
sugar clearly shows that the benefits of an improvement are by no means
confined to the particular locality of the improvement itself. The just
conclusion from all this is that if the nation refuse to make
improvements of the more general kind because their benefits may be
somewhat local, a State may for the same reason refuse to make an
improvement of a local kind because its benefits may be somewhat general.
A State may well say to the nation, "If you will do nothing for me, I
will do nothing for you." Thus it is seen that if this argument of
"inequality" is sufficient anywhere, it is sufficient everywhere, and
puts an end to improvements altogether. I hope and believe that if both
the nation and the States would, in good faith, in their respective
spheres do what they could in the way of improvements, what of inequality
might be produced in one place might be compensated in another, and the
sum of the whole might not be very unequal.

But suppose, after all, there should be some degree of inequality.
Inequality is certainly never to be embraced for its own sake; but is
every good thing to be discarded which may be inseparably connected with
some degree of it? If so, we must discard all government. This Capitol is
built at the public expense, for the public benefit; but does any one
doubt that it is of some peculiar local advantage to the property-holders
and business people of Washington? Shall we remove it for this reason?
And if so, where shall we set it down, and be free from the difficulty?