So urgent became the
necessity, that in 1803 an appropriation for buildings was made to
include the repair of the highway between the Capitol and the other
public buildings. The expenditure of this money, as Jefferson afterwards
boasted, was confined carefully to the avenue between the Capitol and
Mansion hills and to the squares about them. As time went on and the
city grew, specific appropriations had to be made for the construction
of streets and roadways within the District. These were wrung annually
from the reluctant party. To the disgust of people living in more
remote parts of the District, the first of these sums was spent entirely
in widening Pennsylvania Avenue, planting it with trees, in replacing
its wooden culverts with brick, in repairing the public squares about
the buildings, and in grading the slope in front of the War Office.
"It cannot be supposed," replied Jefferson to one protestant, "that
Congress intended to tax the people of the United States at large for
all avenues in Washington and roads in the District of Columbia."
Trivial as these incidents must appear in comparison with the present
attitude of the Government toward the District, they serve to illustrate
the law of compulsion.
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