of an amendment to the Constitution expressly granting this power. This was the advice of Jefferson. While in his private correspondence he frequently expressed the apprehension that the appropriation of public money to such works as roads and canals, and the improvement of rivers, would lead to endless jobbery and all sorts of demoralizing practices, he found the current of popular sentiment in favor of these things too strong for his scruples. In his message of December, 1806, he therefore suggested the adoption of a constitutional amendment to enable Congress to apply the surplus revenue “to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as may be thought proper,” etc. “By these operations,” he said, “new channels of communication will be opened between the states; the lines of separation will disappear; their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties.” This certainly looked to an extensive system of public works. No amendment to the Constitution was passed; but even Jefferson was found willing to employ now and then some convenient reason for doing without the expressed power; such as, in the case of the Cumberland Road, the consent of the states within which the work was to be executed.
Clay took up the advocacy of this policy with all his natural vigor. He was a Western man. He had witnessed the toil and trouble with which the
