Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance
and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads,
rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may
be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of Federal
powers. By these operations new channels of communication will be opened
between the States, the lines of separation will disappear, their
interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and
indissoluble ties. Education is here placed among the articles of public
care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out
of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all
the concerns to which it is equal, but a public institution can alone
supply those sciences which though rarely called for are yet necessary
to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the
improvement of the country and some of them to its preservation. The
subject is now proposed for the consideration of Congress, because if
approved by the time the State legislatures shall have deliberated on
this extension of the Federal trusts, and the laws shall be passed and
other arrangements made for their execution, the necessary funds will
be on hand and without employment. I suppose an amendment to the
Constitution, by consent of the States, necessary, because the objects
now recommended are not among those enumerated in the Constitution, and
to which it permits the public moneys to be applied.
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