6807. POST ROADS, Building.—
Have
you considered all the consequences of your
proposition respecting post roads? I view it
as a source of boundless patronage to the
Executive, jobbing to members of Congress
and their friends, and a bottomless abyss of
public money. You will begin by appropriating
only the surplus of the Post Office revenues;
but the other revenues will soon be
called into their aid, and it will be the source
of eternal scramble among the members, who
can get the most money wasted in their
State; and they will always get most who
are meanest. We have thought, hitherto,
that the roads of a State could not be so well
administered even by the State Legislature,
as by the magistracy of the county, on the
spot. How will it be when a member of
New Hampshire is to mark out a road for
Georgia? Does the power to establish post
roads, given you by the Constitution, mean
that you shall make the roads, or only select
from those already made, those on which
there shall be a post? If the term be equivocal
(and I really do not think it so,) which
is the safer construction? That which permits
a majority of Congress to go cutting
down mountains and bridging of rivers, or
the other, which, if too restricted, may be
referred to the States for amendment, securing
still due measure and proportion among
us, and providing some means of information
to the members of Congress tantamount to
that ocular inspection, which, even in our
county determinations, the magistrate finds
cannot be supplied by any other evidence?
The fortification of harbors was liable to
great objection. But national circumstances
furnished some color. In this case there is
none. The roads of America are the best in
the world except those of France and England.
But does the state of our population,
the extent of our internal commerce, the
want of sea and river navigation, call for
such expense on roads here, or are our means
adequate to it?—
To James Madison. Washington ed. iv, 131.
Ford ed., vii, 63.
(M.
March. 1796)
