90 INTRODUCTION. 



Another writer* commemorates the efficient and enlightened exertions, at this 

 period, of Hugh Williamson, who wrote with reference to the contemplated 

 improvement, papers, entitled " Observations on Navigable Canals," and also 

 " Observations on the Means of Preserving the Commerce of New- York," which 

 were published in magazines of that day. The canal policy found, at the same 

 time, earnest and vigorous supporters in the American and Philosophical Regis- 

 ter, edited by Dr. David Hosack and Dr. John W. Francis. 



The commissioners, in March, 1811, submitted their report written by Gou- 

 verneur Morris, in which they showed the practicability and advantages of a 

 continuous canal from Lake Erie to the Hudson, and stated their estimate of 

 the cost at five millions of dollars, a sum which they ventured to predict would 

 not exceed five per cent of the value of the commodities which, within a cen- 

 tury, would be annually transported on the proposed canal. We may pause 

 here to remark, that the annual value of the commodities carried on the canals, 

 instead of requiring a century to attain the sum of one hundred millions, reached 

 that limit in twenty-five years. " By whom," added the commissioners, " shall 

 the needful expense of the construction of the work be supported ? We take 

 the liberty of entering our feeble protest against a grant to private persons or 

 companies. Too great a national interest is at stake. It must not become the 

 subject of a job or a fund for speculation. Among many other objections there 

 is one insuperable, that it would defeat the contemplated cheapness of transpor- 

 tation. ***** It remains to determine whether the canal shall be at 

 the cost of the state or of the union. If the state were not bound by the federal 

 band with her sister states, she might fairly ask compensation from those who 

 own the soil along the great lakes, for giving permission to cut the canal at their 

 expense ; or her statesmen might deem it still more advisable to make the canal 

 at her own expense, and take for the use of it a transit duty, raising or lowering 

 the impost, as circumstances might direct, for her own advantage. This might 



♦ Dr. EosACK. 



