Wherein consists the danger of giving a liberal construction to the right of Congress to raise and appropriate the public money?  It has been shown that its obvious effect is to secure the rights of the States from encroachment and greater harmony in the political movement between the two governments, while it enlarges to a certain extent in the most harmless way the useful agency of the General Government for all the purposes of its institution.  Is not the responsibility of the representative to his constituent in every branch of the General Government equally strong and as sensibly felt as in the State governments, and is not the security against abuse as effectual in the one as in the other government?  The history of the General Government in all its measures fully demonstrates that Congress will never venture to impose unnecessary burdens on the people or any that can be avoided.  Duties and imposts have always been light, not greater, perhaps, than would have been imposed for the encouragement of our manufactures had there been no occasion for the revenue arising from them; and taxes and excises have never been laid except in cases of necessity, and repealed as soon as the necessity ceased.  Under this mild process and the sale of some hundreds of millions of acres of good land the Government will be possessed of money, which may be applied with great advantage to national purposes.  Within the States only will it be applied, and, of course, for their benefit, it not being presumable that such appeals as were made to the benevolence of the country in the instances of the inhabitants of St. Domingo and Caracas will often occur.  How, then, shall this revenue be applied?  Should it be idle in the Treasury?  That our resources will be equal to such useful purposes I have no doubt, especially if by completing our fortifications and raising and maintaining our Navy at the point provided for immediately after the war we sustain our present altitude and preserve by means thereof for any length of time the peace of the Union.

When we hear charges raised against other governments of breaches of their constitutions, or, rather, of their charters, we always anticipate the most serious consequences—­communities deprived of privileges which they have long enjoyed, or individuals oppressed and punished in violation of the ordinary forms and guards of trial to which they were accustomed and entitled.  How different is the situation of the United States!  Nor can anything mark more strongly the great characteristics of that difference than the grounds on which like charges are raised against this Government.  It is not alleged that any portion of the community or any individual has been oppressed or that money has been raised under a doubtful title.  The principal charges are that a work of great utility to the Union and affecting immediately and with like advantage many of the States has been constructed; that pensions to the surviving patriots of our Revolution, to patriots who fought the battles and promoted the independence of their country, have been granted, by money, too, raised not only without oppression, but almost without being felt, and under an acknowledged constitutional power.