At the same time the commercial spirit of the East was busy, planning improved roads and waterways from the interior to the seaports, and from one part of the coast to the other. Canal projects in great variety, large and small, were discussed with great ardor. While some of these, like the New York and Erie Canal, which then as a scheme began to assume a definite shape, were designed to be taken in hand by single states, the general government was looked to for aid with regard to others. The consciousness of common interests grew rapidly among the people of different states and sections, and with it the feeling that the general government was the proper instrumentality by which those common interests should be served, and that it was its legitimate business to aid in making the different parts of this great common domain approachable and useful to the people.
This feeling was the source from which the policy of “internal improvements” sprang. There was scarcely any difference of opinion among the statesmen of the time on the question whether it was desirable that the general government should aid in the construction of roads and canals, and the improvement of navigable rivers. The only trouble in the minds of those who construed the Constitution strictly was, that they could not find in it any grant of power to appropriate public funds to such objects. But the objects themselves seemed to most of them so commendable that they suggested the submission to the state legislatures
