Note 227 — Chapter III · The Power of Congress to Establish Postroads

1 Willoughby on the Constitution, 588. As late as 1827 Madison wrote to Monroe concerning the Cumberland Road: “I cannot assign the grounds assumed for it by Congress, or which produced his [Jefferson’s] sanction. I suspect that the question of constitutionality was but slightly, if at all, examined by the former, and that the executive consent was doubtingly and hesitatingly given. Having once become a law and being a measure of singular utility, additional appropriations took place of course under the same administration, and with the accumulated impulse thus derived, were continued under the succeeding one, with less critical investigation, perhaps, than was due to the case.” Madison, Works, vol. iii, p. 55.