surplus in the treasury 'to the great purposes of the public education,
roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it
may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of the
federal powers'; and he adds: '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 moneys to be applied.' In 1825, he
repeated in his published letters the opinion that no such power has been
conferred upon Congress."

I introduce this not to controvert just now the constitutional opinion,
but to show that, on the question of expediency, Mr. Jefferson's opinion
was against the present President; that this opinion of Mr. Jefferson, in
one branch at least, is in the hands of Mr. Polk like McFingal's
gun--"bears wide and kicks the owner over."

But to the constitutional question. In 1826 Chancellor Kent first
published his Commentaries on American law. He devoted a portion of one
of the lectures to the question of the authority of Congress to
appropriate public moneys for internal improvements. He mentions that the
subject had never been brought under judicial consideration, and proceeds
to give a brief summary of the discussion it had undergone between the
legislative and executive branches of the government. He shows that the
legislative branch had usually been for, and the executive against, the
power, till the period of Mr. J.Q. Adams's administration, at which point
he considers the executive influence as withdrawn from opposition, and
added to the support of the power. In 1844 the chancellor published a new
edition of his Commentaries, in which he adds some notes of what had
transpired on the question since 1826. I have not time to read the
original text on the notes; but the whole may be found on page 267, and