ii Inland Navigation of the 



River, upon a plane of uniform descent, and for a distance of 

 upwards of three hundred miles. It is wholly needless to state 

 the objections to such a plan, it being obvious, to all competent 

 judges, that it is not merely impracticable, but impossible," in 

 the nature of things. This very report, then, upon the strength 

 of which Mr. Morris has been held up as possessing a superior 

 claim to Mr. Clinton for useful services in preparing the pub- 

 lic mind for the execution of the New York Canal, may be fairly 

 considered as having retarded that great work for several years, 

 and as having had a most marked effect in increasing the dis- 

 trust with which it and all similar enterprises were regarded. 

 Not only was this plan attended with physical impossibilities, 

 but it included, in its details, mounds and embankments of 

 mountain vastness, aqueducts of miles in length, and, in short, 

 structures of various kinds, to which Egyptian labour or Roman 

 power would have been inadequate. 



Mr. Clinton was a member of this commission, and signed 

 the report ; nor is it to be doubted^ that, confiding in the talent 

 and genius of Morris, influenced by his powerful eloquence and 

 reposing trust in the practical aid furnished by the Surveyor- 

 General of the State, he concurred in it. But his enemies, in 

 seeking to deprive him of all merit, have absolved him from all 

 direct agency in preparing it ; while the duties of the most labo- 

 rious magistracy in the United States^ are a sufficient reason 

 that he should not have found time to investigate and reason 

 for himself on the subject. 



In the vicissitudes of political life, Mr. Clinton found himself 

 deprived of office and occupation. He seized this interval of 

 leisure to devote himself to scientific pursuits 3 and, among 

 these, the principles of canal navigation were not neglected. 

 To this we are to ascribe the fact, that, when he was again 

 called upon to act as a canal commissioner, and became chair- 

 man of the board, the investigations and surveys, although in 

 many instances performed by the same persons who had been 

 so unprofitably employed under the former board, were now 

 directed so skilfully, as to result in a plan of a canal complete 

 and practicable in all its parts — the determination of a route 



• The mayoralty of the city of New York, which Mr. Clinton then held. 



