ROADS. 281 



ever do more than keep themselves in repair. Canals will 

 pay for their construction, at some future day, roads never will 

 do it. We have neither the room, nor the wish to prove our 

 proposition, but from information which we have received all 

 over the Union, as to roads, we are satisfied that our Ohio 

 roads will never refund a cent of the capital, expended on 

 them. 



If the Baltimore turnpike from Baltimore to Cumberland 

 can do no more than keep itself in repair, no road in this state 

 can even do that, without more travel than we have, and higher 

 tolls than travelers will pay. The state has done wrong, to 

 subscribe to the stock in our roads, until we had more money 

 than we knew what to do with. However, it is done, and can- 

 not be undone. 



The Cumberland road must soon be made wider, to accom- 

 modate the increased travel upon it. Allowing the western 

 country to contain now eight millions of people, and that our 

 increase be one million a year (a low estimate) in 1850 there 

 will be twenty-one millions in the country west of the moun- 

 tains. These twenty-one millions will visit every year, (that 

 is our business men) the eleven millions east of the mountains. 

 And the ten or eleven millions in the east, will also travel 

 westward more or less. No small portion of all this travel 

 will pass over our territory in Ohio. To accommodate all this 

 traveling population, we must have more, wider and better 

 roads and canals. In constructing them, we should have spe- 

 cial regard to the increase of travel and business to be done 

 on them, even within a very few years. 



If our roads and canals are too narrow for our population 

 thirteen years hence, how can they accommodate the travelers 

 on them, fifty years hence, when nine new states will be and 

 must be admitted into the Union, on this side the Rocky moun- 

 tains; and those states be the largest states as to territory, in 

 in the whole Confederacy ? This hint is intended for those 

 who are in authority. Even this state, in 1850, will contain 

 three, but more probably four millions of people. Our roads 

 36 



