ABSTRACT
Mr. Stewart, of Pa., said, that although he was not from a Western State, yet the State from which he came was as deeply interested in the improvement of the navigation of the Western waters as any State in the Union. These great rivers were, in fact, but extensive feeders of those great lines of improvement connecting the Atlantic and Western States, made by Pennsylvania and Maryland at an expense of some $50,000,000, constituting a debt which now rested with mountain weight upon their people. These State works were alike national in their character and their benefits, and ought to have been made by national means, and would have been so made, with all the other great works of internal improvement which had involved the States of this Union in a foreign debt of $200,000,000, had that great “American system” of policy been continued, which had just been denounced in such emphatic terms as “an imposition—an exploded humbug,” by the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Jameson], Mr. Kennedy, of Indiana, and Mr. Ficklin, of Illinois, and over the “explosion” of which they had exulted in so much triumph. True, it had been exploded, and the prosperity of this country from its deepest foundations had been involved in the explosion. It had thrown back this great nation a century from the point where it would have now been, had that “explosion” not occurred; and had involved the States (and among the rest the States represented by these gentlemen) in debts and embarrassments, from which (if this denounced system was not speedily restored) they would not recover for a century to come.
