Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol III).djvu/52

 44 . In such cases, as the benefit is for the Union, the burthen ought to be borne by the Union. Without any invidious distinction, it may be stated, that the winter mail-route between Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and Washington, by the way of the Susquehannah and Havre de Grace, has been before congress under this very aspect. There is no one, who will doubt the importance of the best post-road in that direction; (the nearest between the two cities;) and yet it is obvious, that the nation alone can be justly called upon to provide the road.

§ 1139. Let a case be taken, when state policy or state hostility shall lead the legislature to close up, or discontinue a road, the nearest and the best between two great states, rivals perhaps for the trade and intercourse of a third state, shall it be said, that congress has no right to make, or repair a road for keeping open for the mail the best means of communication between those states? May the national government be compelled to take the most inconvenient and indirect routes for the mail? In other words, have the states a power to say, how, and upon what roads the mails shall, and shall not travel? If so, then in relation to post-roads, the states, and not the Union, are supreme.

§ 1140. But it is said, that it would be dangerous to allow any power in the Union to lay out and construct post-roads; for then the exercise of the power would supersede the state jurisdiction. This is an utter mistake. If congress should lay out and construct a post-road in a state, it would still be a road within the ordinary territorial jurisdiction of the state. The state could not, indeed, supersede, or obstruct, or