If the strict constructionists had inaugurated the National Government, their task of confining it within a certain limit would not have been so difficult. There is little doubt that the power to "regulate commerce" was intended originally to cover the collection of a national impost. But if United States custom-houses were to collect duties on imported goods, they must erect lighthouses, build piers, and dredge channels in order to get the goods into the harbours. The States, having surrendered the benefits of an impost to the National Government, were not likely to undertake or continue such works on an adequate scale. No permission to engage in such enterprises was to be found in the Constitution except as deduced from the power stated above. The encouragement of foreign commerce had been almost a fetich with the Federalists. They had freely granted appropriations for such purposes. "I well remember," said Jefferson, on one occasion to Gallatin, under whose care these agencies of commerce must come, "the opposition on this very ground to the first act for building a light house. The utility of the thing has sanctioned the infraction." But it was not possible to restrict the demand to lighthouses. Presently an appropriation was necessary for a dry dock to accommodate the little gunboats which the thrifty Administration had substituted for the Federal men-of-war. Jefferson got out of this in a way which would have done credit to his great rival. "Although the power to regulate commerce," said he, "does not give a power to build piers, wharves, open ports, clear the beds of rivers, dig canals, build warehouses, build manufacturing machines, set up manufactories, cultivate the earth, to all of which the power would go if it went to the first, yet a power to provide and maintain a navy is a power to provide receptacles for it and places to cover and preserve it." Here Jefferson had made out a list of proscribed actions, which the National Government dared not enter upon. But soon Gallatin reported a vessel sunk in the Delaware River, a menace to navigation, which neighbouring States showed no inclination to remove. Reluctantly the President gave permission to have the United States open the river. In quoting the powers of the National Government over commerce to justify the action, he added, "But we must take care not to go ahead of them and strain the meaning of the terms still further to the clearing out of the channels of all rivers, etc., of the United States. The removing of a sunken vessel is not the repairing of a pier." Nevertheless, soon after, an appropriation was made for erecting public piers in the Delaware River. It is needless to continue citing the steps by which the Administration assumed a fostering care of these public improvements. To sum up during the last year of Jefferson's administration, appropriations aggregating almost one hundred thousand dollars were made, without opposition, for