Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2). Benton Thomas Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ whose department the supervision of this branch of service belonged, and proposed to him the abolition of the system; but he had too good an opinion of the superintendent (then Mr. Thomas L. McKinney), to believe that any thing was wrong in the business, and refused his countenance to my proposition. Confident that I was right, I determined to bring the question before the Senate – did so – brought in a bill to abolish the factories, and throw open the fur trade to individual enterprise, and supported the bill with all the facts and reasons of which I was master. The bill was carried through both Houses, and became a law; but not without the strenuous opposition which the attack of every abuse for ever encounters – not that any member favored the abuse, but that those interested in it were vigilant and active, visiting the members who would permit such visits, furnishing them with adverse statements, lauding the operation of the system, and constantly lugging in the name of Washington as its author. When the system was closed up, and the inside of it seen, and the balance struck, it was found how true all the representations were which had been made against it. The Indians had been imposed upon in the quality and prices of the goods sold them; a general trade had been carried on with the whites as well as with the Indians; large per centums had been charged upon every thing sold; and the total capital of three hundred thousand dollars was lost and gone. It was a loss which, at that time (1822), was considered large, but now (1850) would be considered small; but its history still has its uses, in showing how differently from its theory a well intended act may operate – how long the Indians and the government may be cheated without knowing it – and how difficult it is to get a bad law discontinued (where there is an interest in keeping it up), even though first adopted as a temporary measure, and as a mere experiment. It cost me a strenuous exertion – much labor in collecting facts, and much speaking in laying them before the Senate – to get this two years' law discontinued, after twenty-five years of injurious operation and costly experience. Of all the branches of our service, that of the Indian affairs is most liable to abuse, and its abuses the most difficult of detection.

      CHAPTER X.

      INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT

      The Presidential election of 1824 was approaching, the candidates in the field, their respective friends active and busy, and popular topics for the canvass in earnest requisition. The New-York canal had just been completed, and had brought great popularity to its principal advocate (De Witt Clinton), and excited a great appetite in public men for that kind of fame. Roads and canals – meaning common turnpike, for the steam car had not then been invented, nor McAdam impressed his name on the new class of roads which afterwards wore it – were all the vogue; and the candidates for the Presidency spread their sails upon the ocean of internal improvements. Congress was full of projects for different objects of improvement, and the friends of each candidate exerted themselves in rivalry of each other, under the supposition that their opinions would stand for those of their principals. Mr. Adams, Mr. Clay, and Mr. Calhoun, were the avowed advocates of the measure, going thoroughly for a general national system of internal improvement: Mr. Crawford and General Jackson, under limitations and qualifications. The Cumberland road, and the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, were the two prominent objects discussed; but the design extended to a general system, and an act was finally passed, intended to be annual and permanent, to appropriate $30,000 to make surveys of national routes. Mr. Monroe signed this bill as being merely for the collection of information, but the subject drew from him the most elaborate and thoroughly considered opinion upon the general question which has ever been delivered by any of our statesmen. It was drawn out by the passage of an act to provide for the preservation and repair of the Cumberland road, and was returned by him to the House in which it originated, with his objections, accompanied by a state paper, in exposition of his opinions upon the whole subject; for the whole subject was properly before him. The act which he had to consider, though modestly entitled for the "preservation" and "repair" of the Cumberland road, yet, in its mode of accomplishing that purpose, assumed the whole of the powers which were necessary to the execution of a general system. It passed with singular unanimity through both Houses, in the Senate, only seven votes against it, of which I afterwards felt proud to have been one. He denied the power; but before examining the arguments for and against it, very properly laid down the amount and variety of jurisdiction and authority which it would require the federal government to exercise within the States, in order to execute a system, and that in each and every part – in every mile of each and every canal road – it should undertake to construct. He began with acquiring the right of way, and pursued it to its results in the construction and preservation of the work, involving jurisdiction, ownership, penal laws, and administration. Commissioners, he said, must first be appointed to trace a route, and to acquire a right to the ground over which the road or canal was to pass, with a sufficient breadth for each. The ground could only be acquired by voluntary grants from individuals, or by purchases, or by condemnation of the property, and fixing its value through a jury of the vicinage, if they refused to give or sell, or demanded an exorbitant price. After all this was done, then came the repairs, the care of which was to be of perpetual duration, and of a kind to provide against criminal and wilful injuries, as well as against the damages of accident, and deterioration from time and use. There are persons in every community capable of committing voluntary injuries, of pulling down walls that are made to sustain the road; of breaking the bridges over water-courses, and breaking the road itself. Some living near it might be disappointed that it did not pass through their lands, and commit these acts of violence and waste from revenge. To prevent these crimes Congress must have a power to pass laws to punish the offenders, wherever they may be found. Jurisdiction over the road would not be sufficient, though it were exclusive. There must be power to follow the offenders wherever they might go. It would seldom happen that the parties would be detected in the act. They would generally commit it in the night, and fly far off before the sun appeared. Right of pursuit must attach, or the power of punishing become nugatory. Tribunals, State or federal, must be invested with power to execute the law. Wilful injuries would require all this assumption of power, and machinery of administration, to punish and prevent them. Repair of natural deteriorations would require the application of a different remedy. Toll gates, and persons to collect the tolls, were the usual resort for repairing this class of injuries, and keeping the road in order. Congress must have power to make such an establishment, and to enact a code of regulations for it, with fines and penalties, and agents to execute it. To all these exercises of authority the question of the constitutionality of the law may be raised by the prosecuted party. But opposition might not stop with individuals. States might contest the right of the federal government thus to possess and to manage all the great roads and canals within their limits; and then a collision would be brought on between two governments, each claiming to be sovereign and independent in its actions over the subject in dispute.

      Thus did Mr. Monroe state the question in its practical bearings, traced to their legitimate results, and the various assumptions of power, and difficulties with States or individuals which they involved; and the bare statement which he made – the bare presentation of the practical working of the system, constituted a complete argument against it, as an invasion of State rights, and therefore unconstitutional, and, he might have added, as complex and unmanageable by the federal government, and therefore inexpedient. But, after stating the question, he examined it under every head of constitutional derivation under which its advocates claimed the power, and found it to be granted by no one of them, and virtually prohibited by some of them. These were, first, the right to establish post-offices and post-roads; second, to declare war; third, to regulate commerce among the States; fourth, the power to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States; fifth, to make all laws necessary and proper to carry into effect the granted (enumerated) powers; sixth, from the power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property of the United States. Upon this long enumeration of these claimed sources of power, Mr. Monroe well remarked that their very multiplicity was an argument against them, and that each one was repudiated by some of the advocates for each of the others: that these advocates could not agree among themselves upon any one single source of the power; and that it was sought for from place to place, with an assiduity which proclaimed its non-existence any where. Still he examined each head of derivation in its order, and effectually disposed of each in its turn. 1. The post-office СКАЧАТЬ