INTRODUCTION. 109 



the waters of the western and northern lakes with the Atlantic ocean, was esta- 

 blished to the conviction of the most incredulous. 



Governor Clinton announced these gratifying results to the legislature in 1820, 

 and admonished them that while efforts directly hostile to internal improvements 

 would in future be feeble, it became a duty to guard against insidious enmity ; 

 and that in proportion as the Erie canal advanced towards completion, would be 

 the ease of combining a greater mass of population against the further exten- 

 sion of the system. Attempts, he remarked, had already been made to arrest 

 the progress of the Erie canal west of the Seneca river, and he anticipated their 

 renewal when it should reach the Genesee. But the honor and prosperity of 

 the state demanded the completion of the whole of the work, and it would be 

 completed in five years, if the representatives of the people were just to them- 

 selves and to posterity. Referring to the local tax, he submitted whether it 

 comported with the magnanimity of government to resort to partial or local im- 

 positions to defray the expenses of a magnificent work, identified with the gene- 

 ral prosperity. The commissioners informed the legislature that they had em- 

 ployed David Thomas to survey the proposed harbor at Buffalo, and that plans 

 for a similar improvement at Black Rock had been received. 



The committee on internal improvements in the senate, consisted of Jabez D. 

 Hammond, Gideon Granger and Stephen Barnum ; and the committee on canals 

 in the assembly, of George Huntington, John T. Irving, David Austin, Elial T. 

 Foote and Thomas J. Oakley. 



A law was passed, suspending the collection of the tax on steamboat passen- 

 gers, and imposing, by way of commutation, on the North River Steamboat 

 Company an annual tax of five thousand dollars, for the benefit of the canal 

 fund. This company then enjoyed, by grant from the legislature, a monopoly 

 of steam navigation upon all the waters within the state, as a reward to Robert 

 Fulton, Robert R. Livingston and their associates, as public benefactors. The 

 grant was afterwards adjudged by the supreme court of the United States to be 

 void, so far as it affected navigation in tide waters, because it conflicted with the 





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