“Mr. Chairman, the President seems to think that enough may be done in the way of improvements, by means of tonnage duties, under State authority, with the consent of the General Government. Now, I suppose this matter of tonnage duties is well enough in its own sphere. I suppose it may be efficient, and perhaps _sufficient_, to make slight improvements and repairs in harbors already in use, and not much out of repair. But if I have any correct general idea of it, it must be wholly inefficient for any generally beneficent purposes of improvement. I know very little, or rather nothing at all, of the practical matter of levying and collecting tonnage duties; but I suppose one of its principles must be, to lay a duty, for the improvement of any particular harbor, _upon the tonnage coming into that harbor_. To do otherwise--to collect money in _one_ harbor to be expended in improvements in _another_--would be an extremely aggravated form of that inequality which the President so much deprecates. If I be right in this, how could we make any entirely new improvements by means of tonnage duties? How make a road, a canal, or clear a greatly obstructed river? The idea that we could, involves the same absurdity of the Irish bull about the new boots: ‘I shall never git ‘em on,’ says Patrick, ’till I wear ’em a day or two, and stretch ’em a little.’ We shall never make a canal by tonnage duties, until it shall already have been made awhile, so the tonnage can get into it. “After all, the President concludes that possibly there may be some great objects of improvements which can not be effected by tonnage duties, and which, therefore, may be expedient for the General Government to take in hand. Accordingly, he suggests, in case any such be discovered, the propriety of amending the Constitution. Amend it for what? If, like Mr. Jefferson, the President thought improvements _expedient_ but not Constitutional, it would be natural enough for him to recommend such an amendment; but hear what he says in this very message: “‘In view of these portentous consequences, I can not but think that this course of legislation should be arrested, even were there nothing to forbid it in the fundamental laws of our Union.’ “For what, then, would _he_ have the Constitution amended? With _him_ it is a proposition to remove _one_ impediment, merely to be met by _others_, which, in his opinion, can not be removed--to enable Congress to do what, in his opinion, they ought not to do if they could.” [Here Mr. Meade, of Virginia, inquired if Mr. L. understood the President to be opposed, on grounds of expediency, to any and every improvement?]