of tolls was a step too far, as President Monroe held that it was one thing to make appropriations for public improvements, but an entirely different thing to assume jurisdiction and sovereignty over the land whereon those improvements were made. This was one of the great public questions in the first half of the present century. President Jackson's course was not very consistent. Before his election he voted for internal improvements, even advocating subscriptions by the Government to the stock of private canal companies, and the formation of roads beginning and ending within the limits of certain states. In his message at the opening of the first congress after his accession, he suggested the division of the surplus revenue among the states, as a substitute for the promotion of internal improvements by the general Government, attempting a limitation and distinction too difficult and important to be settled and acted upon on the judgment of one man, namely, the distinction between general and local objects.
"The pleas of the advocates of internal improvement," wrote a contemporary au-
