INTRODUCTION. 93 



circumstances of this sort, there can be no doubt that those microcosmic minds 

 which, habitually occujjied in the consideration of what is little, are incapable 

 of discerning what is great, and who already stigmatize the proposed canal as a 

 romantic scheme, will not unsparingly distribute the epithets, absurd, ridiculous, 

 chimerical, on the estimate of what it may produce. The commissioners must, 

 nevertheless, have the hardihood to brave the sneers and sarcasms of men, who, 

 with too much pride to study, and too much wit to think, undervalue what they 

 do not understand, and condemn what they cannot comprehend." The com- 

 missioners, imbued with the spirit of philosophic prophecy, add, " The life of an 

 individual is short. The time is not distant, when those who make this report 

 will have passed away. But no term is fixed to the existence of a state ; and 

 the first wish of a patriot's heart is, that his own may be immortal. But, what- 

 ever limit may have been assigned to the duration of New- York, by those eternal 

 decrees which established the heavens and the earth, it is hardly to be expected 

 that she will be blotted from the list of political societies before the effects here 

 stated, shall have been sensibly felt. And even when, by the flow of that perpetual 

 stream which bears all human institutions away, our constitution shall be dissolved 

 and our laws be lost, still the descendants of our children's children will remain. 

 The same mountains will stand, the same rivers run. New moral combinations 

 will be formed on the old physical foundations, and the extended line of remote 

 posterity, after a lapse of two thousand years, and the ravage of repeated revolu- 

 tions, when the records of history shall have been obliterated, and the tongue of 

 tradition have converted (as in China) the shadowy remembrance of ancient 

 events into childish tales of miracle, this national work shall remain, bearing tes- 

 timony to the genius, the learning, the industry and intelligence of the present 



age- 



Passing the advantages which the state must derive from opening a scene so 

 vast to the incessant activity of her citizens, the commissioners discussed and 

 proved her fiscal abihty to complete the enterprise. Impressed with the same 

 expansive views which were exhibited in the first efforts of the legislature in 



