Debates in the Several State Conventions/Volume 4/Dismal Swamp Canal
Internal Improvement.—Dismal Swamp Canal.
Senate, May, 1824.
Mr. VAN BUREN. He would not vote for the bill, for he did not believe that this government possessed the constitutional power to make these canals, or to grant money to make them. * * * If he believed in the power of the government to grant money for this purpose, the present mode would be the last one he should think of adopting. If there was any grant of money, at all, for this purpose, it should be direct. Where aid was granted in the mode now proposed, abuses would creep in, and, in nine cases out of ten, deception would be practised. In the state of New York, Mr. Van Buren said, they had had full experience of this, in the application for charters for banks. Plausible pretences were set up, that the state would be thereby benefited, till these practices became so numerous, that, in the end, public opinion was decidedly against them; and the last legislature, to their honor, had refused all applications of this description. * * * As to the question (of constitutionality) being settled, he should protest against the admission of such a doctrine; and he should resist, to all intents and purposes, the idea that the acts of this Congress were to bind him and his constituents hereafter.
Note.—Mr. Van Buren is by no means certain that, in this respect, he himself has been altogether without fault. At the very first session after he came into the Senate, the knowledge of the perpetual drain that the Cumberland road was destined to prove upon the public treasury unless some means were taken to prevent it, and a sincere desire to go, at all times, as far as he could consistently with the Constitution, to aid in the improvement, and promote the prosperity, of the western country, had induced him, without full examination, to vote for a provision authorizing the collection of toll on this road. The affair of the Cumberland road, in respect to its reference to the constitutional powers of this government, is a matter entirely sui generis. It was authorized during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, and grew out of the disposition of the territory of the United States through which it passed. He has never heard an explanation of the subject (although it has been a matter of constant reference) that has been satisfactory to his mind. All that he can say is, that, if the question were again presented to him, he would vote against it, and that his regret for having done otherwise would be greater, had not Mr. Monroe—much to his credit—put his veto upon the bill, and were it not the only vote, in the course of a seven years' service, which the most fastidious critic can torture into an inconsistency with the principles which Mr. Van Buren professed to maintain, and in the justice of which he is every day more and more confirmed.