sixty-three pounds to the square foot, it will make five hundred and four thousand pounds. A boat with eight hundred barrels of flour will weigh five hundred thousand pounds, and when passing at the rate of three miles an hour, the whole weight of the boat will be on one hundred feet of the arch, for the boat, when thus moving, will not swell the body of the water three feet ahead of the boat. Add to the water and loaded boat the weight of the timbers, which make the span, and there will not be less than twelve hundred thousand pounds on each arch when a loaded boat is passing. To form an accurate estimate of what the aqueduct will cost, let us examine the report of what has been done with the $100,000 already appropriated, and the work done for it. The account reads in these words: Statement showing the amount of property on hand at the Potomac aqueduct. Steam engine purchased in Baltimore, Do. do. $2,654 00 2,654 00 1,346 00 2,120 00 3,623 00 409 00 4,055 00 623 75 7,550 00 1,956 00 200 00 4,068 00 3,417 00 Granite for ice breakers, cut to pattern, ticipation of collection of their other Derricks, blocks, &c., for hoisting large stone, 5,155 00 1,500 00 480 00 1,000 00 200 00 150 00 250 00 150 00 600 00 80 00 24 00 $57,767 75 - 79,087 00 $21,319 25 - $10,659 62 WM. TURNBULL, Capt. U. S. T. E., Supt. Potomac aqueduct. JANUARY 5, 1835. A part of the abutment on the Virginia side has cost $13,503, and two coffer-dams have cost $10,659 624 each. Besides the item of $7,550 for oak pins, short spikes, and other timber for the dams, making the entire cost of the two dams $28,868 35. These cofferdams are to be made tight, and sunk down in the water to the bottom; and the water then to be pumped out, and the mud removed clear off, and clean, to the solid rock, before the mason work of the pillars can be commenced inside of them. The chairman of the committee informed me, if I correctly understood him, that a coffer-dam for each pillar would be required. If, then, [FEB. 4, 1835. there be twenty-nine pillars, the coffer-dams will cost $418,288; if fourteen, the cost will be $202,076. If the coffer-dams cost these enormous sums, gentlemen can form some opinion and estimate what the removing of fifteen feet of mud, and the erection of those large pillars, sixty-four feet and a half high, of solid masonry, will cost, well and strongly made. They must be cut out of large and heavy rock, to sustain the weight at such a height from their foundations. After the pillars are finished, the arches and abutments to be made. Here we have a happy specimen of what part of one cost, $13,503, which does not seem to be half completed. $79,087 have been expended of our money, and all that has been done, as far as I could see, is two coffer-dams, and part of an abutment made on the Virginia side; and even a part of this has been taken away to fill up cribs attached to the coffer-dams, to hold them down, from the fear and apprehension that the rise in the river at the breaking up of the ice will take them off. The making of the abutment, and then taking it away again, somewhat resembles Penelope's web. What she wove in the day she unravelled at night. Sir, what is done in the summer is undone in the winter. But it is equally profitable to them if Congress will pass this bill, and pass bill after bill until the work is done. The city will be employed and paid as well for undoing as doing; and more money will be scattered here, which is in fulfilment of all the plans for disbursements in this District. I have no idea, if Congress shall think proper to make this aqueduct, that the same will cost less than a million of dollars. To finish the balance of the canal and locks will cost at least $500,000 more. The citizens of Alexandria declare that they can do no more; their means are exhausted. The city subscribed $250,000 to the Chesapeake and Ohio canal; borrowed the money in Holland and paid it; and $50,000 have been subscribed by the city to the canal from Georgetown to Alexandria, making a debt which the city owes of $300,000. The citizens have subscribed $80,000. The city tax is equal to one and a half per cent. upon the cash selling price of real property in the city. I make this statement, not to insult the feelings of the people, but to show that the situation of the city is such as to make it evident and manifest to every gentleman here, that we have now two alternatives presented to us, either to stop with what we have done and disbursed, or to ex pend about $1,500,000 more. I am well aware that the estimates of the engineer, as stated to us, are much be low what I estimate the cost at. I have been here a number of years, and have seen public works begun, and seen them finished. The estimates, as far as have come within my observation, are always greatly below the actual cost. We must not forget another fact, which exhibits a melancholy state of things; that it costs the United States, as I will show hereafter, about five individuals or companies. times as much to make any public works, as it would The reasons why these things occur, I will also endeavor to point out in proper time. Those gentlemen who make out estimates are interested in having the work undertaken, and they expect large salaries to superintend the execution of it. The estimates, therefore, must never startle, never must frighten the undertaker, and deter him from the enter prise. The man making the calculation is aware of this; hence the estimates always fall under the cost, sometimes not amounting to one fourth. It is said that the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company is pledged to make the abutment on the Georgetown side. That calculation will fail. It is a notorious fact that this company has no funds, and cannot for want of means proceed with their own work. It has been said by gentlemen, in argument, that the abutments will extend five hundred feet into the river, and thereby shorten the aqueduct; that will not lessen the cost, as the abutments will be as expensive in their construction as any part of the aqueduct. But if the abutment is extended into the river two hundred and fifty feet from the Georgetown side, what will be the effects? Gentlemen must recollect that the aqueduct is at the upper end of the port. The effect is obvious to any man, that the harbor of Georgetown will fill up with mud in consequence of the current being thrown into the middle of the river by the abutment, and a perfect eddy formed in the harbor. We will be called on when the event happens to expend thousands to remove the mud. Having made these remarks, Mr. Speaker, to show what I think will be the cost of this canal, who will have to incur this cost, and how and in what manner it will injure Georgetown, I will next proceed to inquire into the necessity of the work. It is known to this House, and in full view of this hall, that the canal terminates at Georgetown in a basin, in the edge of the Potomac river. From thence to Alex. andria, is eight miles, and from one place to the other is the finest navigable river in America. No current to any extent, a regular ebbing and flowing of the tide. I will ask, and so will every man in the nation who has not a high internal inprovement fever, why make a canal across and then down one of the finest rivers in the world for navigation? To these questions several reasons have been assigned by different gentlemen, who have addressed the House on the other side of the question. Some gentlemen allege that the Potomac cannot be navigated by canal boats, that the waves are too high, and the river too rough. That argument is incorrect in point of fact. There scarcely ever was a time, within my observation, when a canal boat could not pass with perfect safety between Georgetown and Alexandria. The river is in no place between those points a mile wide, little or no current. A canal boat can live in any water that a keel or flat bottom boat could. The fact is well known to all the gentlemen present from the West, that some thousands of those boats descend the Ohio and Mississippi every year, loaded with produce, a distance of from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles. Those rivers are larger than the Potomac, and in them the waves run much higher; besides, they are on the water twenty or thirty days at a time, and cannot pick their time, like a boat going from Georgetown to Alexandria and back again. I am told by gentlemen from New York, that their canal boats descend the Hudson to the city of New York and back again, and that some of the boats navigate Lakes Erie and Huron. My opinion is, that boats can navigate the Potomac between those points as easily and cheaply as the canal. A boat loaded with eight hundred barrels of flour can, with all ease, make the trip down and up in one day. The cost of the hands would not be more than two dollars. I understood a gentleman in debate to-day to say, it would take eighty hands to navigate a boat from one point to the other. The boat could not furnish room for eighty hands to work on board. The large boats which descend the Ohio and Mississippi are worked by three hands, and frequently they have to encounter tremendous storms. I will tell that honorable gentleman, that I (who have the use only of one hand) will take him, and we two alone, when the tide sets fair, can take a boat with eight hundred barrels of flour from Georgetown to Alexandria in three hours. Another gentleman has said that Congress is under a moral obligation of justice to make the canal. This obligation he deduces from the fact that Congress, by an act of 1804, directed the causeway to be built from the head of Mason's Island to the Virginia shore, and, in consequence thereof, that channel cannot now be navi [H. OF R. gated. The House will perceive, from this map which I hold in my hand, that Mason's Island is right opposite to the basin at the termination of the canal; and it is about as easy to cross the river, and go to the lower point of the island, from the basin, as it is to go to the upper. If there were no causeway there, no boat would ever go from the basin up the river one mile, for the purpose of passing down the Virginia shore, when it would thereby increase the distance two miles. As for safety, one passage is just as safe as the other. But it is alleged that the waves would be too high to go down the river on the Georgetown side of the island, to the lower point of it. There is no danger in that part of the river; if there be danger any where, it is at the mouth of Four Mile run, which is within two or three miles of Alexandria. But where is the moral obligation on the general Government to make the canal, on account of that causeway? The river has two channels: the main one by Georgetown; the other, although the smaller of the two, gave vent to a considerable portion of the river. Georgetown petitioned Congress, and Alexandria consented to it, to make the causeway, and thereby throw the whole river into one channel. In 1812 Congress passed an act to cut a passage through the causeway, which would not cost more than two thousand dollars. Alexandria finally declined to do it, after the act was passed, and that, too, at her solicitation. The reason why she declined to cut it is obvious: the same was useJess. But now, when it would not take more than two thousand dollars to remove the obstructions in it, if any, we are called on to expend near two millions to cut a canal in consequence of it. Another gentleman has, in part, based the claim of Alexandria to have this bill passed in consequence of some votes of Mr. Rush, as Secretary of the Treasury, when voting on the stock of the United States in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company; and also upon observations that passed when the stockholders of that company met on some occasion for the transaction of business. That argument is futile, and has nothing in it. How the vote of Mr. Rush, and a conversation among the stockholders of that company, could create an obligation on us to cut a canal from Georgetown to Alexandria, right by the side of the Potomac, or in any way bear on the question, I am at a loss to know. It is of the same family of that preposterous idea, that eighty hands would be required to navigate a loaded boat from Georgetown to Alexandria. It is just about as absurd, and of as little value. It is proper the canal should stop where it now does. When the farmer brings his produce to market down the canal, and lands it in the basin, he has the choice of four markets-Georgetown, Washington, Alexandria, and Baltimore, when the railroad is finished. That competition will ensure the highest price which can be had. You extend the demand, because you open more markets to the produce of the country. The people of Alexandria complain that the produce stops at Georgetown. If they will give one cent more in the barrel, they can get it, because one quarter of a cent will take it down the Potomac. If they will give no more, what interest has the farmer to take it to them? Now, it is our business to see that the farmer shall get the best price; but we have no concern if the merchants of Alexandria will give no more than the merchants of Georgetown. Which set of gentlemen shall make the commission on it? It is in fact to the advantage of the farmer, for another reason, that his flour and other productions should stop where they now do. If the lateral canal was made, he might be tempted to take them to Alexandria; for there is a strange idea prevailing with some men, when descending a river to market; they expect to get a better price, the lower they go down; and when they get there, not being able to return, the competition of buyers ceases, and the produce is in consequence sold lower. This melancholy fact we often experience in the western country. Another gentleman [Mr. VINTON] said that it was no question now for the examination of Congress, whether the canal ought to be made or not; that question was determined by the Congress of 1832, when the first appropriation was made of $100,000. That argument would be good if the gentleman would first prove to us that the canal, when finished, would be worth what it would now cost to finish it; and, until he proves that fact, the argument amounts to nothing. That gentleman was much more felicitous in debate the other day, when he proved, to my satisfaction, that an intruder upon the public lands in Arkansas, who came within twenty days of being in time to obtain a pre-emption right, was not, in consequence of his intrusion and disappointment, entitled to the first choice of two tracts of forty acres each, any where in the Territory. But he can console himself by this reflection, that Fate has said that a man cannot be always equal to himself. [FEB. 4, 1835. years on the decline. It is possible this is a fact, to some extent; but the appearances of the city indicate that it never was a place of much importance. If it were ever considered a city of any magnitude, it was because the other towns and villages in its vicinity were in their infancy and small, but they have outgrown it, and one of them has become the third city in the Union. Now that the comparison of population and commerce is to the disadvantage of Alexandria, the citizens of that city have taken up an idea that in fact it has got less, when the real fact is, the other cities have grown larger. But if it be true that the city is on the decline, what is the cause of it? Richmond to the south, and Baltimore to the north, owing to their more advantageous positions, have taken away their former exporting and importing business. What remedy can we apply, without injustice to those other cities? None that I know of. Giving this District money will not do any good. You must give the people commerce and manufactures. You must give them that which we cannot impart-industry, enterprise, and energy. The poorest nations in the world are those who follow mining, and nothing else. Look at Spain before the gold and silver of America poured into that kingdom, and afterwards, for the truth of this assertion. Millions of dollars are expended annually in this District by the Government of the United States, including the legislative, executive, and judicial departments, with all the appropriations made by Congress for the benefit of the District, and the sums expended by persons who visit the seat of Government. Yet what do those large expenditures and disbursements profit the people? Nothing. For although there are some persons in the District who are industrious, enterprising, and wealthy, yet, as a mass, the population are poor, wretched, and miserable. The appearance of the District and its inhabitants, instead of presenting to the view and imagination a pleasing prospect, disgusts and sickens the heart. Three millions a year, expended annually in Kentucky, would make it bloom like a garden, and give life and vigor to our agriculture, commerce, and manufactures; but in this District, those large sums expended and disbursed fall as unprofitably on the people as a shower of rain upon upon the great deserts of Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Sahara. We are pathetically told that such is the decline and dilapidations of Alexandria, that it now presents the aspect of a howling wil derness. Nations have their rise and fall, and so have cities. When the causes which have built up cities cease to ex I have been at a loss to know why the people of Alexandria display so much solicitude to make this canal. I have examined the question as to the practical utility of the navigation of the canal over the navigation of the river, and I can find no solution of it in that point of view. I think I can conjecture the real reason and motive, which by them is kept back; for it would not do to suggest it. It will be recollected that the water in the canal is thirty or forty feet above tide water. Where it terminates, that place can have the benefit of water power, almost to any extent, for mills, and working all kinds of machinery. If the canal is continued to Alexandria, that place gets the benefit of the water power. If it remains where it now is, Georgetown has it. Very little can be used at Georgetown if the canal is extended to Alexandria, for it will not do to let more water into the canal than to create a very slow current; for a current of even one mile an hour will obstruct the navigation against it. There is no feeder to be had between Georgetown and Alexandria, some waste of water will take place, and hence the lateral canal to Alexandria will require all the water in it. If this be the subject of contest in reality, between those two cities, ought the United States to take either side of the contest? Each city is equally entitled to our fostering care and protection, and we should stand aloof in this contest. Georgetown and her citizens have expended more money in the canal than Alexandria and the citizens thereof. If the natural point of termi-ist, they must go down; their doom is fixed: Fate has nation is there, then let it remain there. At all events, there is nothing in the controversy which will justify our spending $1,500,000 for either side, or interfering at all. The citizens of Alexandria have urged the passage of this bill, upon this further consideration, that since Congress have purchased out the two toll bridges across the Potomac, one at the Little falls, and the other opposite the city, and have made them free bridges, that now a great portion of the produce from Virginia goes to Georgetown and Washington, which formerly went to Alexandria; and this appropriation, in addition to what they have already had, they claim as an indemnity. This argument is too preposterous to merit an answer, or even to notice, were it not to show the dreadful shifts to which they resort to sustain the bill on the table. What right can exist, based upon such a claim? We furnish two additional markets to the farmers of Virginia for their produce. Alexandria complains because we do not let their former monopoly remain. We have obstructed no highways to that city; we have only opened highways to the balance of the District, free of toll. Our sympathies are addressed, upon the ground that the trade and commerce of Alexandria have been for said it, and it will be fulfilled. The once mighty cities of the old world and ancient times tell this afflicting and solemn truth. Where is Thebes, with her hundred gates? Where is Babylon, Nineveh, Persepolis, Palmyra, and Baldec? The besom of destruction and the ploughshare of ruin have swept them from the face of the earth, and scarcely a vestige is left to point where they once stood. We may weep over the fall of friends, nations, and cities, but cannot avert the destiny that awaits them. I have, Mr. Speaker, before intimated that the impor. tance of this bill could only be discovered by taking it in connexion with the bills which have gone before, and the bills which are to come after it; some of which are now in this House, and some in the Senate. The distance from this city to Wheeling is about two hundred and seventy-five miles. Let us examine for a moment, and see the amount expended in making a highway, by land and water, from one of these points to the other, and that partly owing to the undue influence of the people of this District on Congress. We have made a turnpike road from Cumberland to Wheeling, a distance of one hundred and thirty-three miles, on which we have expended $3,200,000. On the contemplated canal from Georgetown to Cumberland, མ 1:1 ོ་་ཝཾ 1185 FEB. 4, 1835.] OF DEBATES IN CONGRESS. Alexandria Canal Bill.. we have expended $1,000,000. From Georgetown into this city, $160,000; from Georgetown to Alexandria, $100,000. We have paid $70,000, the interest due from this city to Holland for money borrowed to assist in making the canal; making in all $4,530,000 already expended. A bill is now in the Senate to appropriate to the Cumberland road $350,000, also to pay the interest on the Holland debt of this city for five years, amounting to $350,000, and a bill in this House to subscribe another million to this canal, and the bill now under consideration, making in all $1,800,000. If this bill passes, theusame vote will pass all the other bills now in both Houses, and not only do that, but will be an entering wedge to finish the canal, as I have already suggested, which will cost $1,500,000, and to pay the Holland debt for the whole District, which is $1,500,000. Put the whole sums already expended, those proposed in the bills on the tables of the two Houses, and what we will be called on hereafter to expend together, if we do not now stop, and the amount is enormous, no less than $9,330,000. This whole sum on one route, from this to Wheeling, a distance, as I have before remarked, of two hundred and seventy-five miles. I call upon the honorable members of this House to resist this profligate and prodigal waste of the public money, and so partial in locating the places of expenditure. There is one consideration connected with this subject that ought not to be overlooked and disregarded by the gentlemen here from the State of Pennsylvania. The imports for the western country, which are of vast extent, and daily increasing with the growing wealth and population of that country, are imported into the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and from those cities conveyed across the mountains to the navigable waters of the West. Baltimore and Wheeling are the competitors of Philadelphia and Pittsburg for this trade. The competition is a fair and equal one, and both cities, east and west of the mountains, are able to maintain their respective claims and pretensions. In this state of things, I ask gentlemen from Pennsylvania, is it right, just, and fair, that the United States should join with either side in this competition? You will all, with one voice, answer no. Then, I will ask you again, is not the Government of the United States operating to the prejudice of Philadelphia and Pittsburg, and in favor of Baltimore and Wheeling, by expending on the Baltimore route about nine millions of public money, not only to facilitate the transportation of the imports, but by making the route free of toll to a great extent, thereby lessening the cost of wagonage and transportation from the East to the West on the Baltimore and Wheeling line; in consequence of which, the business will leave Philadelphia and go to Baltimore, when, without any interference on the part of the general Government, Philadelphia and Pittsburg could not only sustain themselves in the competition, but maintain the advantages which nature has given them, and they now enjoy? I call upon them to look back and see what has been the injurious effects of our legislation heretofore in relation to the Baltimore and Wheeling route. It has been such as to drive Pennsylvania prematurely, considered with reference to her means, into a system of internal improvements, to facilitate the passage from the East to the West; hence her heavy and enormous State debts at this time. For the truth of these assertions, and this train of reasoning, I refer them to Governor Wolf's message to the Legislature at the present session. One of the gentlemen from that State [Mr. MILLER] says that last session he was opposed to this bill, and a day or two ago he spoke in favor of it. I am unable to account for his His reasons appeared to me, at least, to be unsatisfactory. I will not say, or even be understood to insinuate, that, in the pathetic language of the gentle conversion. VOL. XI.-75 1186 [H. OF R. man from Louisiana, [Mr. THOMAS,] he could not close his bowels of compassion towards the people of this District, and the good things therein. I object, Mr. Speaker, to the passage of this bill, and I have opposed the passage of every other bill, purporting to be for internal improvements, this session and the last, on account of the partiality of the Government in selecting the objects of internal improvements. Kentucky pays her proportion of the duty on foreign imports, which is one source of our revenue. The other, the public lands, she has paid not only her proportion in money, but of that part of the purchase price which consists in blood shed in battle, to gain the lands by conquest from the Indian enemy, she has paid more than all the United States besides. In those horrid wars, her best blood has been poured out in torrents, and hundreds of battle fields have been bleached white with the bones of her noble sons. Yet, in this division of public money, what does she get? Not one cent. A majority of her population is opposed to the present administration, and millions expended there would not buy her people. Unlike some other States, Kentucky is not in market. A small appropriation was once made to take stock in the great national road from Maysville to Lexington. The President vetoed the bill. On the eighth of last January, the party in power met in this city to celebrate the victory at New Orleans, and the extinguishment of the national debt. On that occasion, the veto on the Maysville road was made either the subject of a toast or sentiment, followed by a speech from the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and approved by the united cheers of the multitude there assembled. I was not present, but I was in an adjoining room. heard it. My blood boiled within me. And is there a Kentuckian here who does not feel the hand of persecution pressing down on Kentucky, and who is not fired with indignation at it? I know, Mr. Speaker, that Kentucky will never get any thing until we have a general system to distribute the excess of public money among the States, according to population, giving to the new States their proportion in addition to what they are now entitled to by compact. I There is a certain part of this House against all internal improvements, on constitutional principles. Those States which receive the benefit of partial appropriations annually, oppose the general system, because they are now getting all. These two parties in this House make a majority. What remedy is there left us? None but this: to oppose all partial systems on the subject; and this will separate and dissever the unnatural coalition which now exists, and will finally result in obtaining a majority for a general system. I am confirmed in this opinion by the vote given the other day upon the resolution of my able and eloquent colleague, [Mr. CHILTON,] who never loses sight of the true policy of Kentucky; which resolution proposed a general system, and was negatived by a vote of this House. I am in favor, Mr. Speaker, for the reasons just now assigned, of a general system of internal improvement, by a distribution among the States of the surplus money on hand; and this distribution to be made according to representative population. The reasons which I have assigned are applicable to my own State alone. I may be met by this argument, that such distribution of the surplus revenue is unconstitutional. I deny it is so, as to the public lands, the sales of which amount annually to about $3,000,000. These lands are public property, and are to be applied to the public good. No object to which they shall be applied is specifically pointed out, either in the constitution or the deeds of cession. In relation to taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, their proceeds, as I have before said, are to be applied as H. OF R.] Alexandria Canal Bill. [FEB. 4, 1835. pointed out in the constitution. Was not a part of the public lands appropriated to make a road through the Black Swamp, in the State of Ohio? Were not four hundred thousand acres appropriated by the present administration, to cut a canal around the Muscle shoals in Alabama? No thoughts then were entertained of its being unconstitutional. Let the system be carried on out of the avails of the public lands; or if it be extended, amend the constitution. This system prevents the misapplication of the public funds and the waste of the public money; under this system, no servile fawning Mr. Speaker, there are other considerations which have favorite can be nourished and fattened on the "public great influence on me, not only to oppose this bill, but spoils." The States will apply their respective propor- every other bill which contains an appropriation of one tions to the best advantage, and to objects which need it dollar of the people's money, when, in my opinion, the most. They know much better than the general Gov-public service does not call for it. Let any gentleman ernment what objects of internal improvement require read the history of nations, their rise and downfall, and if their first care and attention. There is another consid- there be any fatality which awaits a nation more certainly eration in favor of this general system, which ought not than any other, it is this their downward course in increasto be overlooked. The States will get more labor for ing the expenses of Government, and, consequently, the the same money than the general Government. burdens of the people. I, for one, at least, desire to see this Government brought back to that simplicity and economy which marked its career in the better days of the Republic, the times of Washington and Jefferson, confining its expenditures as much as possible to the army, navy, and civil list. United States dissipated and wasted. As a happy illustration of the prodigal waste of the public money, I will again call the attention of the House to the cost of the two coffer-dams, $28,868, and the small part of the abutment on the Virginia side, which has been done, $13,582. On the account exhibited, there is another item that ought to attract our attention: we are charged with the sum of 2,654 dollars for an engine purchased of Alexandria to do the work for the benefit of that city alone. The turnpike road of the United States from Cumberland to Wheeling has cost $3,200,000, a distance of one hundred and thirty-three miles, averaging $24,060 a mile. The friends of the road say it will cost $330,000 more to complete it; and to effect this object a bill is now in the Senate to appropriate the sum required. The Pennsylvania avenue has about twentyfive hundred square rood or perches in it. To Macadamize it and put in curb stones have cost the United States $130,000, making $59.20 a square rood, including curb stones. Kentucky has made as fine turnpike roads as are in America, graded at two and a half degrees, Macadamized with two coats nine inches deep, bridges and all, for $4,500 a mile. The public works of the United States, as far as they have come within my observation, are badly done. The public works of the States are well executed. Those of the United States get out of repair. Those of the States are kept in order. You will ask, and so will the House, how is it possible there should be this difference? The reason, when known, is easily comprehended. Kentucky carries on her improvements as joint stockholder with private individuals. Then the effort is made to have the work well done, and get the value of the money expended in labor judiciously applied. The superintendents and agents of the United States seem to go on the principle of having the work as badly done as possible, so it may have to be done over again, like the Pennsylvania avenue, and to expend as much as will be tolerated. Then there are so many agents under different names, such as engineers, superintendents, commissioners, clerks, &c., employed, who receive high annual salaries, and who are interested in making the most of the job; hence the work progresses slowly; for the moment it is done they are out of business. They all seem to understand their business, which is to handle as much money as possible, and make as much as possible stick to their hands when handling it. I recollect of reading an anecdote which occurred in the reign of King James I. of England. It was fashionable in those days for Kings to have some shrewd, witty, facetious man, to play the King's fool. The fool, in the presence of the King, caused twelve men to stand up in a line; he gave to the first a pound of soft butter, and he handed it to the man who stood next, and so on, until it came to the last man, and when he handed it over for public use, there was not more than one ounce left. The fool remarked to the King: Look, my lord, and see the smallness of the lump since those men have all handled the butter; that is the way, may it please your Majesty, your money goes, when applied to your business and affairs; so much sticks to the hands of your public servants, there is scarcely any left for your service. Just in the same manner is the money of the The principles which operate to increase the expenses of a Government are but few, in fact two only: inordinate love of power in the ruler, and love of money in the office-holders, and those who seek office. The ruler's power is increased as his disbursements are increased, because he is thereby furnished with the means to buy up and corrupt the people, which is done not by bribes direct, but by multiplying offices, agencies, and employ. ments, and allowing to the incumbents high salaries and emoluments. I am operated upon by this further consideration: The constitution gives the head of the executive department great power, by many thought unsafe. It is felt in the army, navy, and civil departments, the Post Of fice and Indian departments, and also in the sale and management of the public lands. The collection of twenty millions of dollars annually, and the disbursing the same, make at least one hundred thousand persons dependent upon his patronage, and who are ready to bend the knee to power, and smile when he is pleased, and weep when he frowns. Such a power, Mr. Speaker, concentrated in one man, is exceedingly dangerous to the liberties of the people in a republican Government. Whenever he chooses, by his influence and patronage, to operate in the election of State officers, and officers to the general Government, he is almost resistless. If he chooses to exercise his powers in this House, he can do it more effectually, and control our decisions more certainly and absolutely, than the King of Great Britain can his Parliament, or the King of the French his Chambers. If, to the powers already enumerated, we give the additional patronage of expending and lavishing upon his flatterers, favorites, and fawning sycophants, five or six millions more, annually, under the pretence of public improvements, we put additional weapons in his hand, and doubly nerve his arm to wield them, by which the liberties of the people may be cloven down. How many vultures and harpies, all over America, are now preying upon the substance of the people, and are either basking in the sunshine of executive favor, or abusing his misplaced confidence. The power of the Executive has been growing for years; it has now reached an immeasurable size. Its dimensions are colossal, and its height towers unto the clouds. Its frowns appal the gaze its gigantic magnificence bas attracted. The stoutest hearts almost quail to behold it. This is not fiction, it is not imaginary, Mr. Speaker. The President of the United States has more real power t |