Of the four great highways over the Allegheny watershed, contemplated by Gallatin in his report in 1808, the Cumberland Road was the only one realised. No excuse similar to the one under which it was begun ever presented itself, and the party vision was not sufficiently national to undertake public improvements unless in disguise. The strict-construction theory that these works should be built by the individual States threw upon the newer States a burden which they could ill afford to bear. The West was almost ready to revolt against the hidebound policy of the Administrations. Individualism was characteristic of the Southern States as a whole, but this improvement question broke the ranks of individualism by allying the newer Southern States with the newer Northern States for the benefits of national paternalism. To illustrate: a proposition in 1824 to employ the army engineers in making surveys for roads and canals passed the House without a negative vote from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Louisiana, or Alabama. Of the older States, Maryland and Pennsylvania, interested in opening up the western parts of their respective domains in this manner, joined themselves to the Western States and made possible the passage of the bill. Different speakers deplored this tendency to arouse sectional animosities; to array the older States, which had made such improvements from their own resources, against the new States, which would presumably be the sole gainers by government aid. Clay was the leader of the Western section. He saw in the situation possibilities of building up a great following for this American idea. He declared that the power of Congress to control commerce meant inland as well as ocean commerce; that the construction of harbours upon the Great Lakes was as much a duty as the building of harbours along the seacoast; that dredging a Western river was as constitutional as clearing an ocean channel. He once said that to make a distinction between these two kinds of commerce would require an analysis of the water for each appropriation; if salt, the measure was constitutional; if fresh water, unconstitutional. "Two years ago," said he, in pleading for a system of canals for the western people, "a sea wall, in other words, a marine canal, was authorized by an act of Congress in New Hampshire, and I doubt not that many voted for it who have now constitutional scruples on this bill. Yes, everything may be done for foreign commerce; anything, everything, on the margin of the ocean. But nothing for domestic trade; nothing for the great interior of the country."