erned, in part, by other considerations; for other bills, for aiding the making roads and canals, passed into laws during that session, and their avowed purpose was the great object of internal improvement. President Jackson, in 1830, declared himself to be of opinion, that Congress did not possess the constitutional power to construct roads and canals, or appropriate money for improvements of a local character; but he admitted that the right to make appropriations for such as were of a national character had been so generally acted upon, and so long acquiesced in, as to justify the exercise of it, on the ground of continued usage. He objected, upon that distinction, to the bills authorizing subscriptions to the Maysville and Rockville Road Companies, as not being within the legitimate powers of Congress. The great question concerning the power of Congress to appropriate moneys for internal improvements within the states remained still as unsettled as ever, as late as the 3d of August, 1846; for on that day President Polk objected to and defeated the bill, which had passed both houses of Congress, for appropriating $1,378,450, for separate and distinct objects of internal improvement, in certain harbors, rivers, and lakes in various parts of the United States. The President denied the existence of a constitutional power in the federal government to construct works of internal improvement within the states, or to appropriate moneys from the treasury for that purpose. He considered the absence of such a power to be a principle of construction well settled, and that the inexpediency of the power was demonstrated in the exercise of it in that case; for the bill contained appropriations of moneys for more than twenty objects of internal improvement, called, in the bill, harbors, at places which have never been declared by law either ports of entry or delivery, and at which there has never been an arrival of foreign merchandise, and from which there has never been a vessel cleared for a foreign country. The constitutional scruples of the President went, in their application in this case, to interdict the necessary, and, in my opinion, the clearly constitutional jurisdiction and discretion of Congress, "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states," as to the improvement of the navigation of the many rivers, harbors, and great lakes within the United States, and on which waters is carried an immensely valuable commerce. This strict construction of the Constitution is in striking contrast with that large construction which has been given to the Constitution, in authorizing Congress to admit new states into the Union, and to which we have already alluded in a preceding note. See ante, 259. The rightful power of the general government to direct the improvement of the navigation of the internal waters of the United States for the commercial use of the Union, and to apply the revenues thereof for that purpose, appears to me to result from a sound construction of the Constitution. It is one of its great and essential objects. The Mississippi, for instance, with its millions of inhabitants, and great cities and towns on its banks, calls loudly for means to clear and remove obstructions to a safe navigation. The states cannot do it, and the improvement must come, if it comes at all, from the general government. The whole Union is deeply interested in the safe and easy navigation of the great rivers and lakes within the limits of the United States, and bordering on two or more states. It makes no difference in reason or policy in the necessary application of the power, whether the rivers or lakes are divided by two or more states. It is sufficient for the power, if the improvement to be called for be general in its object, and for national purposes, and for the regulation, safety, and facility of commerce. All navigable waters, not land-locked within a state, whether they be rivers, harbors, gulfs, bays, lakes, or coasts of the ocean, are, and were intended to be, and ought to be, subservient to the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states. They fall within the congressional power, and are subject to the regulation of the United States, and they are entitled to the patronage, protection, and pecuniary support of the general gov.

ernment. This power is justly to be applied to the erection of light-houses, buoys, piers, breakwaters, harbors, and for clearing obstructions, and deepening and widening navigable waters. The United States have the exclusive command of the revenues derived from commerce and navigation, and the reason, justice, and policy of holding this power to exist in Congress, and that it should be liberally and largely applied, strike me with obvious and decisive force. The grant of commercial power to Congress is general, and must v[r]est essentially in its application in the discretion of Congress, and in its judgment as to the importance of this exercise of the power to the promotion and security of commerce among the states and with foreign nations. There does not appear to be any just ground for construing the power strictly and within straight and narrow lines. A grant of general power for great national objects ought to be liberally construed to be made adequate to all future exigencies within the scope of this power. There does not appear to be any color in the Constitution for prescribing arbitrary lines and limits to the power to regulate

commerce.

Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, ii. pp. 429-440, and again, pp. 519-538, has stated, at large, the arguments for and against the proposition, that Congress have a constitutional authority to lay taxes and to apply the power to regulate commerce, as a means directly to encourage and protect domestic manufactures; and without giving any opinion of his own on that contested doctrine, he has left the reader to draw his own conclusions. I should think, however, from a view of the arguments as stated, that every mind which has taken no part in the discussions, and felt no prejudice or territorial or party bias on either side of the question, would deem the arguments in favor of the congressional power vastly superior. The learned commentator I should apprehend to be decidedly of that way of thinking. He says, "that the commercial system of the United States has been employed sometimes for the purpose of revenue; sometimes for the purpose of prohibition; sometimes for the purpose of retaliation and commercial reciprocity; sometimes to lay embargoes; sometimes to encourage domestic navigation, and the shipping and mercantile interest, by bounties, by discriminating duties, and by special preferences and privileges; and sometimes to regulate intercourse, with a view to mere political objects, such as to repel aggressions, increase the pressure of war, or vindicate the rights of neutral sovereignty. In all these cases, the right and duty have been conceded to the national government by the unequivocal voice of the people." Mr. Hamilton, in his argument in the cabinet in February, 1791, on the national bank, considered the regulation of policies of insurance, of salvage upon goods found at sea, the regulation of pilots and of foreign bills of exchange, as coming within the power to regulate commerce. Ib. 519, note. [Post, 489, n. 1.]

VOL. I.

19

[289]

LECTURE XIII.

OF THE PRESIDENT.

THE title of the present lecture may conveniently be examined in the following order: 1. The unity of this department. 2. The qualifications required by the Constitution for the office of President. 3. The mode of his appointment. 4. His duration. 5. His support. 6. His powers.

By the Constitution, it is ordained that the executive power shall be vested in a President. (a)

1. Unity of the Office. The object of this department is the execution of the law; and good policy dictates that it should be organized in the mode best calculated to attain that end with precision and fidelity. Consultation is necessary in the making of laws. The defect or grievance they are intended to remove must be distinctly perceived, and the operation of the remedy upon the interests, the morals, and the opinion of the community profoundly considered. A comprehensive knowledge of the great interests of the nation, in all their complicated relations and practical details, seems to be required in sound legislation; and it shows the necessity of a free, full, and perfect representation of the people, in the body intrusted with the legislative power. But when laws are duly made and promulgated, they only remain to be executed. No discretion is submitted to the executive officer. It is not for him to deliberate and decide upon the wisdom or expediency of the law. What has been once declared to be law, under all the cautious forms of deliberation prescribed by the Constitution, ought to receive prompt obedience. The characteristical qualities required in the executive department are promptitude, decision, and force; and these qualities are most likely to exist when the executive authority is limited to a single person, moving by (a) Art. 2, sec. 1.

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the unity of a single will. Division, indecision, and delay are exceedingly unfavorable to that steady and vigorous administration of the law which is necessary to secure tranquillity at home, and command the confidence of foreign nations. Every government, ancient and modern, which has been constituted on different principles, and adopted a compound executive, has suffered the evils of it; and the public interest has been sacrificed, or it has languished under the inconveniences of an imbecile or irregular administration. In those states which have tried the project of executive councils, the weakness of them has been strongly felt and strikingly displayed; and in some instances in which they have been tried (as in Pennsylvania and Georgia), they were soon abandoned, and a single executive magistrate created, in accordance with the light afforded by their own experience, as well as by the institutions of their neighbors.1

Unity increases not only the efficacy, but the responsibility of the executive power. Every act can be immediately traced and brought home to the proper agent. There can be no concealment of the real author, nor, generally, of the motives of public measures, when there are no associates to divide or to mask responsibility. There will be much less temptation to depart from duty, and much greater solicitude for reputation, when there are no partners to share the odium, or to communicate confidence by their example. The eyes of the people will be constantly directed to a single conspicuous object; and, for these reasons, De Lolme (a) considered it to be a sound axiom of policy, that the executive power was more easily confined when it was one. "If the execution of the laws," he observes, "be intrusted to a number of hands, the true cause of public evils is hidden. *Tyranny, in such states, does not always beat down the *273 fences that are set around it, but it leaps over them. It mocks the efforts of the people, not because it is invincible, but because it is unknown." The justness of these reflections might be illustrated and confirmed by a review of the proceedings of the former council of appointment in New York, under the Constitution of 1777. All efficient responsibility was there lost, by reason of the constant change of the members, and the difficulty of ascertaining the individual to whom the origin of a bad appoir t ment was to be attributed.

(a) Const. of England, 111. [Book 2, ch. 2.]

1 Ante, 221, n. 1.

2. Qualifications. - The Constitution requires (a) that the President shall be a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and that he shall have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and shall have been fourteen years a resident within the United States. Considering the greatness of the trust, and that this department is the ultimately efficient executive power in government, these restrictions will not appear altogether useless or unimportant. As the President is required to be a native citizen of the United States, ambitious foreigners cannot intrigue for the office, and the qualification of birth cuts off all those inducements from abroad to corruption, negotiation, and war, which have frequently and fatally harassed the elective monarchies of Germany and Poland, as well as the pontificate at Rome. The age of the President is sufficient to have formed his public and private character; and his previous domestic residence is intended to afford to his fellowcitizens the opportunity to attain a correct knowledge of his principles and capacity, and to have enabled him to acquire habits of attachment and obedience to the laws, and of devotion to the public welfare.

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3. Mode of Election. The mode of his appointment presented one of the most difficult and momentous questions that occupied the deliberations of the assembly which framed the Constitution; and if ever the tranquillity of this nation is to be dis*274 turbed, and its liberties endangered by a struggle for power, it will be upon this very subject of the choice of a President. This is the question that is eventually to test the goodness and try the strength of the Constitution; and if we shall be able, for half a century hereafter, to continue to elect the chief magistrate of the Union with discretion, moderation, and integrity, we shall undoubtedly stamp the highest value on our national character, and recommend our republican institutions, if not to the imitation, yet certainly to the esteem and admiration of the more enlightened part of mankind. The experience of ancient and modern Europe has been unfavorable to the practicability of a fair and peaceable popular election of the executive head of a great nation. It has been found impossible to guard the election from the mischiefs of foreign intrigue and domestic turbulence, from violence or corruption; and mankind have (a) Art. 2, sec. 1.