propose to the States an amendment authorizing it."[1]
In his veto of the Maysville Road bill President Jackson quoted the above paragraphs from his annual message, and, after citing both Madison's and Monroe's positions as to internal improvements of pure local character, continues:
"The bill before me does not call for a more definate opinion upon the particular circumstances which will warrent appropriations of money by Congress to aid works of internal improvement, for although the extention of the power to apply money beyond that of carrying into effect the object for which it is appropriated has, as we have seen, been long claimed and exercised by the Federal Government, yet such grants have always been professedly under the control of the general principle that the works which might be thus aided should be 'of a general, not local, national, not State,' character. A disregard of this distinction would of necessity lead to the subversion of the federal system. That
- ↑ Richardson's Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. ii, pp. 451, 452.
