The only cases in which
the consent and cession of particular States can extend the power of
Congress are those specified and provided for in the Constitution.
I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the
improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National
Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage
to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly
given by the Constitution, and believing that it can not be deduced from
any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction and a
reliance on insufficient precedents; believing also that the permanent
success of the Constitution depends on a definite partition of powers
between the General and the State Governments, and that no adequate
landmarks would be left by the constructive extension of the powers of
Congress as proposed in the bill, I have no option but to withhold
my signature from it, and to cherishing the hope that its beneficial
objects may be attained by a resort for the necessary powers to the same
wisdom and virtue in the nation which established the Constitution in
its actual form and providently marked out in the instrument itself a
safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest.
JAMES MADISON.
PROCLAMATION.
[From Annals of Congress, Fourteenth Congress, second session, 218.
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