"In the administration of Mr. Jefferson we have two examples of the exercise of the right of appropriation, which, in the consideration that led to their adoption, and in their effects upon the public mind, have had a greater agency in marking the character of the power than any subsequent events. I allude to the payment of fifteen millions of dollars for the purchase of Louisiana, and to the ORIGINAL APPROPRIATION FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CUMBERLAND ROAD; the latter act deriving much weight from the acquiescence and approbation of three of the most powerful of the original members of the confederacy, expressed through their respective legislatures. Although the circumstances of the LATTER CASE may be such as to deprive so much of it as relates to the actual construction of the road of the force of an obligatory exposition of the Constitution, it must nevertheless be admitted that so far as the mere appropriation of money is concerned, they present the principle in its most imposing aspect. No less than twenty-three different laws have been passed through all the forms of the Constitution, appropriating upwards of two millions and a half of dollars out of the national treasury in support of that improvement, with the approbation of every president of the United States, including my predecessor, since its commencement. The views of Mr. Monroe upon this subject were not left to inference. During his administration, a bill was passed through both houses of Congress, conferring the jurisdiction and prescribing the mode by which the federal government should exercise it in the case of THE CUMBERLAND ROAD. He returned it with objections to its passage, and in assigning them, took occasion to say that in the early stages of the government he had inclined to the construction that it had no right to expend money except in the performance of acts authorized by the other specific grants of power, according to a strict construction of them; but that on further reflection and observation his mind had undergone a change; that his opinion then was: 'that Congress had an unlimited power to raise money, and that in its appropriation they have a discretionary power, restricted only by the duty to appropriate it to purposes of common defence and of general, not local, National, not State benefit;' and this was avowed to be the governing principle through the residue of his administration." [Illustration: HON. ANDREW STEWART.] On the 27th of January, 1829, the Hon. Andrew Stewart, of Pennsylvania, in a vigorous speech on the floor of Congress, repelled the proposition that the general government was lacking in power and authority to make and preserve the road, from which the following extracts are taken: