108 INTRODUCTION. 



provement in the mechanical construction of canals, made since the building of 

 the Languedoc canal. 



The commissioners recommended that a navigable communication should im- 

 mediately be opened from the Erie canal to the salt works at Salina, and that 

 the militia law should be so modified as to excuse laborers on the canals from 

 military duty, and sustained the recommendation by the governor of the simul- 

 taneous prosecution of all portions of the Erie canal. 



The joint committee on internal improvements consisted of Jabez D. Ham- 

 mond, Henry Seymour and Walter Bowne, senators, and Ezekiel Bacon, Jacob 

 Rutsen Van Rensselaer, John Doty, Jedediah Miller and Asahel Warner, of the 

 assembly. Mr. Bacon submitted a report, and introduced a bill, embodying the 

 recommendations of the canal commissioners. This bill became a law, twenty- 

 five members of the assembly voting against the section which empowered the 

 canal commissioners to commence the eastern and western portions of the Erie 

 canal and the branch canal from the Erie canal to Salina. A survey was also autho- 

 rized from the mouth of the Oswego river, up the same, the Seneca river and 

 the outlet of the Onondaga river, with a view to improve the navigation of those 

 streams. This was the first legislative step towards the construction of the Os- 

 wego canal. 



At this session a law was passed, suspending the collection of the local canal 

 tax, until further directions should be given by the legislature. 



An act was also passed, granting a loan to citizens of Buffalo, to be applied to 

 the construction, under the direction of the canal commissioners, of a harbor 

 at that place, and providing for the assumption of the harbor, if it should ulti- 

 mately be deemed expedient. 



On the twenty-third of October, 1819, the portion of the Erie canal between 

 Utica and Rome was opened to navigation, and on the twenty-fourth of Novem- 

 ber the Champlain canal admitted the passage of boats. Thus in less than two 

 years and five months one hundred and twenty miles of artificial navigation had 

 been finished, and the physical as well as the financial practicability of uniting 



