[224] Annals of 15th Congress, 2d Sess., pp. 544, 2443.
[225] 3 Stat. L. 412, 426, 500, 560, 604, 728.
[226] Richardson, vol. ii, p. 142. Monroe’s veto was not unexpected. He had sounded a warning in his annual message of 1822 when he said that a power to execute a system of internal improvements, “confined to great national purposes and with proper limitations, would be productive of eminent advantage to our Union,” and thus “thought it advisable that an amendment of the Constitution to that effect should be recommended to the several states.” Ibid., vol. ii, p. 191.
[227] 1 Willoughby on the Constitution, 588. As late as 1827 Madison wrote to Monroe concerning the Cumberland Road: “I cannot assign the grounds assumed for it by Congress, or which produced his [Jefferson’s] sanction. I suspect that the question of constitutionality was but slightly, if at all, examined by the former, and that the executive consent was doubtingly and hesitatingly given. Having once become a law and being a measure of singular utility, additional appropriations took place of course under the same administration, and with the accumulated impulse thus derived, were continued under the succeeding one, with less critical investigation, perhaps, than was due to the case.” Madison, Works, vol. iii, p. 55.
[228] The validity of Monroe’s argument is treated below, p. 81. Perhaps it may not be amiss to add that I have not attempted an exhaustive consideration of congressional activity in respect to road construction. This has been done by Nelson, Presidential Influence on the Policy of Internal Improvements, and Young, A Political and Constitutional Study of the Cumberland Road. There are also excellent and less specialized accounts in Babcock, The Rise of American Nationality, ch. xv, Turner, The Rise of the New West, ch. xiii (American Nation, vols. 13 and 14), and Schouler, History of the United States, vol. iii. My sole purpose has been to treat congressional action and presidential opinion from their constitutional aspects in relation to the power to establish postoffices and postroads.
[229] 4 Stat. L. 71; for the list of appropriations, see Nelson, p. 57; see also Lalor, Cyclopaedia of Political Science (Internal Improvements), vol. ii, p. 568.
[230] Richardson, vol. ii, p. 281.
[231] Mason, The Veto Power, pp. 143, 145.
[232] Richardson, vol. ii, p. 452.
[233] Ibid., vol. ii, p. 492.