Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 11).djvu/175

 even this is an unsafe one, arbitrary in its nature, and liable, consequently, to great abuses, is too obvious to require the confirmation of experience. It is, however, sufficiently definate and imperative to my mind to forbid my approbation of any bill having the character of the one under consideration. I have given to its provisions reflection  but I am not able to view it in any other light than as a measure of purely local character; or, if it can be considered national, that no further distinction between the appropriate duties of the General and State Governments need be attempted, for there can be no local interest that may not with equal propriety be denominated national. It has no connection with any established system of improvements; is exclusively within the limits of a State, starting at a point on the Ohio River and running out 60 miles to an interior town, and even as far as the State is interested conferring partial instead of general advantages.

"Considering the magnitude and importance of the power, and the embarrassments to which, from the very nature of the