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 and post-road grant. The word "establish" was the ruling term: roads and offices were the subjects on which it was to act. And how? Ask any number of enlightened citizens, who had no connection with public affairs, and whose minds were unprejudiced, what was the meaning of the word "establish," and the extent of the grant it controls, and there would not be a difference of opinion among them. They would answer that it was a power given to Congress to legalize existing roads as post routes, and existing places as post-offices—to fix on the towns, court-houses, and other places throughout the Union, at which there should be post-offices; the routes by which the mails should be carried; to fix the postages to be paid; and to protect the post-offices and mails from robbery, by punishing those who commit the offence. The idea of a right to lay off roads to take the soil from the proprietor against his will; to establish turnpikes and tolls; to establish a criminal code for the punishment of injuries to the road; to do what the protection and repair of a road requires: these are things which would never enter into his head. The use of the existing road would be all that would be thought of; the jurisdiction and soil remaining in the State, or in those authorized by its legislature to change the road at pleasure.

2. The war power. Mr. Monroe shows the object of this grant of power to the federal government—the terms of the grant itself—its incidents as enumerated in the constitution—the exclusion of constructive incidents—and the pervading interference with the soil and jurisdiction of the States which the assumption of the internal improvement power by Congress would carry along with it. He recites the grant of the power to make war, as given to Congress, and prohibited to the States, and enumerates the incidents granted along with it, and necessary to carrying on war: which are, to raise money by taxes, duties, excises, and by loans; to raise and support armies and a navy; to provide for calling out, arming, disciplining, and governing the militia, when in the service of the United States; establishing fortifications, and to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over the places granted by the State legislatures for the sites of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings. And having shown this enumeration of incidents, he very naturally concludes that it is an exclusion of constructive incidents, and especially of one so great in itself, and so much interfering with the soil and jurisdiction of the States, as the federal exercise of the road-making power would be. He exhibits the enormity of this interference by a view of the extensive field over which it would operate. The United States are exposed to invasion through the whole extent of their Atlantic coast (to which may now be added seventeen degrees of the Pacific coast) by any European power with whom we might be engaged in war: on the northern and northwestern frontier, on the side of Canada, by Great Britain, and on the southern by Spain, or any power in alliance with her. If internal improvements are to be carried on to the full extent to which they may be useful for military purposes, the power, as it exists, must apply to all the roads of the Union, there being no limitation to it. Wherever such improvements may facilitate the march of troops, the transportation of cannon, or otherwise aid the operations, or mitigate the calamities of war along the coast, or in the interior, they would be useful for military purposes, and might therefore be made. They must be coextensive with the Union. The power following as an incident to another power can be measured, as to its extent, by reference only to the obvious extent of the power to which it is incidental. It has been shown, after the most liberal construction of all the enumerated powers of the general government, that the territory within the limits of the respective States belonged to them; that the United States had no right, under the powers granted to them (with the exceptions specified), to any the smallest portion of territory within a State, all those powers operating on a different principle, and having their full effect without impairing, in the slightest degree, this territorial right in the States. By specifically granting the right, as to such small portions of territory as might be necessary for these purposes (forts, arsenals, magazines, dock-yards and other needful buildings), and, on certain conditions, minutely and well defined, it is manifest that it was not intended to grant it, as to any other portion, for any purpose, or in any manner whatever. The right of the general government must be complete, if a right at all. It must extend to every thing necessary to the enjoyment and protection of the right. It must extend to the seizure and condemnation of the property, if necessary; to the punishment of the offenders for injuries to the roads and canals; to the establishment and enforcement of tolls; to the unobstructed construction protection, and preservation of the roads. It must be a complete right, to the extent above stated, or it will be of no avail. That right does not exist.

3. The commercial power. Mr. Monroe argues that the sense in which the power to regulate commerce was understood and exercised by the States, was doubtless that in which it was transferred to the United States; and then shows that their regulation of commerce was by the imposition of duties and imposts; and that it was so regulated by them (before the adoption of the constitution), equally in respect to each other, and to foreign powers. The goods, and the vessels employed in the trade, are the only subject of regulation. It can act on none other. He then shows the evil out of which that grant of power grew, and which evil was, in fact, the predominating cause in the call for the convention which framed the federal constitution. Each State had the right to lay duties and imposts, and exercised the right on narrow, jealous, and selfish principles. Instead of acting as a nation in regard to foreign powers, the States, individually, had commenced a system of restraint upon each other, whereby the interests of foreign powers were promoted at their expense. This contracted policy in some of the States was counteracted by others. Restraints were immediately laid on such commerce by the suffering States; and hence grew up a system of restrictions and retaliations, which destroyed the harmony of the States, and threatened the confederacy with dissolution. From this evil the new constitution relieved us; and the federal government, as successors to the States in the power to regulate commerce, immediately exercised it as they had done, by laying duties and imposts, to act upon goods and vessels: and that was the end of the power.

4. To pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the Union. Mr. Monroe considers this "common defence" and "general welfare" clause as being no grant of power, but, in themselves, only an object and end to be attained by the exercise of the enumerated powers. They are found in that sense in the preamble to the constitution, in company with others, as inducing causes to the formation of the instrument, and as benefits to be obtained by the powers granted in it. They stand thus in the preamble: "In order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution." These are the objects to be accomplished, but not by allowing Congress to do what it pleased to accomplish them (in which case there would have been no need for investing it with specific powers), but to be accomplished by the exercise of the powers granted in the body of the instrument. Considered as a distinct and separate grant, the power to provide for the "common defence" and the "general welfare," or either of them, would give to Congress the command of the whole force, and of all the resources of the Union—absorbing in their transcendental power all other powers, and rendering all the grants and restrictions nugatory and vain. The idea of these words forming an original grant, with unlimited power, superseding every other grant, is (must be) abandoned. The government of the United States is a limited government, instituted for great national purposes, and for those only. Other interests are left to the States individually, whose duty it is to provide for them. Roads and canals fall into this class, the powers of the General Government being utterly incompetent to the exercise of the rights which their construction, and protection, and preservation require. Mr. Monroe examines the instances of roads made in territories, and through the Indian countries, and the one upon Spanish territory below the 31st degree of north latitude (with the consent of Spain), on the route from Athens in Georgia to New Orleans, before we acquired the Floridas; and shows that there was no objection to these territorial roads, being all of them, to the States, ex-territorial. He examines the case of the Cumberland road, made within the States, and upon compact, but in which the United States exercised no power, founded on any principle of "jurisdiction or right." He says of it: This road was founded on an article of compact between the United States and the State of Ohio, under which that State came into the Union, and by which the expense attending it was to be defrayed by the application of a certain portion of the money arising from the sales of the public lands within the State. And, in this instance, the United States have exercised no act of jurisdiction or sovereignty within either of the States through which the road runs, by taking the land from the proprietors by force—by passing acts for the protection of the road—or to raise a revenue from it by the establishment of turnpikes and tolls—or any other act founded on the principles of jurisdiction or right. And I can add, that the bill passed by Congress, and which received his veto, died under his veto message, and has never been revised, or attempted to be revised, since; and the road itself has been abandoned to the States.

5. The power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to carry into effect the powers specifically granted to Congress. This power, as being the one which chiefly gave rise to the latitudinarian constructions which discriminated parties, when parties were founded upon principle, is closely and clearly examined by Mr. Monroe, and shown to be no grant of power at all, nor authorizing Congress to do any thing which might not have been done without it, and only added to the enumerated powers, through caution, to secure their complete execution. He says: I have always considered this power as having been granted on a principle of greater caution, to secure the complete execution of all the powers which had been vested in the General Government. It contains no distinct and specific power, as every other grant does, such as to lay and collect taxes, to declare war, to regulate commerce, and the like. Looking to the whole scheme of the General Government, it gives to Congress authority to make all laws which should be deemed necessary and proper for carrying all its powers into effect. My impression has invariably been, that this power would have existed, substantially, if this grant had not been made. It results, by necessary implication (such is the tenor of the argument), from the granted powers, and was only added from caution, and to leave nothing to implication. To act under it, it must first be shown that the thing to be done is already specified in one of the enumerated powers. This is the point and substance of Mr. Monroe's opinion on this incidental grant, and which has been the source of division between parties from the foundation of the government—the fountain of latitudinous construction—and which, taking the judgment of Congress as the rule and measure of what was "necessary and proper" in legislation, takes a rule which puts an end to the limitations of the constitution, refers all the powers of the body to its own discretion, and becomes as absorbing and transcendental in its scope as the "general welfare" and "common defence clauses" would be themselves.

6. The power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property of the United States. This clause, as a source of power for making roads and canals within a State, Mr. Monroe disposes of summarily, as having no relation whatever to the subject. It grew out of the cessions of territory which different States had made to the United States, and relates solely to that territory (and to such as has been acquired since the adoption of the constitution), and which lay without the limits of a State. Special provision was deemed necessary for such territory, the main powers of the constitution operating internally, not being applicable or adequate thereto; and it follows that this power gives no authority, and has even no bearing on the subject.

Such was this great state paper, delivered at a time when internal improvement by the federal government, having become an issue in the canvass for the Presidency, and ardently advocated by three of the candidates, and qualifiedly by two others, had an immense current in its favor, carrying many of the old strict constitutionists along with it. Mr. Monroe stood firm vetoed the bill which assumed jurisdiction over the Cumberland road, and drew up his sentiments in full, for the consideration of Congress and the country. His argument is abridged and condensed in this view of it; but his positions and conclusions preserved in full, and with scrupulous correctness. And the whole paper, as an exposition of the differently understood parts of the constitution, by one among those most intimately acquainted with it, and as applicable to the whole question of constructive powers, deserves to be read and studied by every student of our constitutional law. The only point at which Mr. Monroe gave way, or yielded in the least, to the temper of the times, was in admitting the power of appropriation—the right of Congress to appropriate, but not to apply money—to internal improvements; and in that he yielded against his earlier, and, as I believe, better judgment. He had previously condemned the appropriation as well as the application, but finally yielded on this point to the counsels that beset him; but nugatorially, as appropriation without application was inoperative, and a balk to the whole system. But an act was passed soon after for surreys—for making surveys of routes for roads and canals of general and national importance, and the sum of $30,000 was appropriated for that purpose. The act was as carefully guarded as words could do so, in its limitation to objects of national importance, but only presented another to the innumerable instances of the impotency of words in securing the execution of a law. The selection of routes under the act, rapidly degenerated from national to sectional, from sectional to local, and from local to mere neighborhood improvements. Early in the succeeding administration, a list of some ninety routes were reported to Congress, from the Engineer Department, in which occurred names of places hardly heard of before outside of the State or section in which they were found. Saugatuck, Amounisuck, Pasumic, Winnispiseogee, Piscataqua, Titonic Falls, Lake Memphramagog, Conneaut Creek, Holmes' Hole, Lovejoy's Narrows, Steele's Ledge, Cowhegan, Androscoggin, Cobbiesconte, Ponceaupechaux, alias Soapy Joe, were among the objects which figured in the list for national improvement. The bare reading of the list was a condemnation of the act under which they were selected, and put an end to the annual appropriations which were in the course of being made for these surveys. No appropriation was made after the year 1827. Afterwards the veto message of President Jackson put an end to legislation upon local routes, and the progress of events has withdrawn the whole subject—the subject of a system of national internal improvement, once so formidable and engrossing in the public mind—from the halls of Congress, and the discussions of the people. Steamboats and steam-cars have superseded turnpikes and canals; individual enterprise has dispensed with national legislation. Hardly a great route exists in any State which is not occupied under State authority. Even great works accomplished by Congress, at vast cost and long and bitter debates in Congress, and deemed eminently national at the time, have lost that character, and sunk into the class of common routes. The Cumberland road, which cost $6,670,000 in money, and was a prominent subject in Congress for thirty-four years—from 1802, when it was conceived to 1836, when it was abandoned to the States: this road, once so absorbing both of public money and public attention, has degenerated into a common highway, and is entirely superseded by the parallel railroad route. The same may be said, in a less degree, of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, once a national object of federal legislation intended, as its name imports, to connect the tide water of the Atlantic with the great rivers of the West; now a local canal, chiefly used by some companies, very beneficial in its place, but sunk from the national character which commanded for it the votes of Congress and large appropriations from the federal treasury. Mr. Monroe was one of the most cautious and deliberate of our public men, thoroughly acquainted with the theory and the working of the constitution, his opinions upon it entitled to great weight; and on this point (of internal improvement within the States by the federal government) his opinion has become law. But it does not touch the question of improving national rivers or harbors yielding revenue—appropriations for the Ohio and Mississippi and other large streams, being easily had when unincumbered with local objects, as shown by the appropriation, in a separate bill, in 1824, of $75,000 for the improvement of these two rivers, and which was approved and signed by Mr. Monroe.