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 enumerationof Federal powers. By these operations new channels of communications will be opened between the States, the lines of separationwill disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties. Education is hereplaced among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of privateenterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal, but a public institution can alone supply thosesciences which though rarely called for are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to theimprovement 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 shallhave deliberated on this extension of the Federal trusts, and the laws shall be passed and other arrangements made for theirexecution, 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 notamong those enumerated in the Constitution, and to which it permits the public moneys to be applied.
Thomas Jefferson's Sixth State of the Union Address: Information from Answers.com