112 INTRODUCTION. 



It ai)peared at the commencement of the session of the legislature in 1823, 

 that the pubHc debt amounted to $5,423,500, of which $4,243,500 were for 

 moneys borrowed to construct the canals. The commissioners reported that 

 boats had passed on the Erie canal a distance of more that two hundred and 

 twenty miles, and that as early as the first of July ensuing, that channel would 

 be na\'igable from Schenectady to Rochester. The tolls collected in 1822, upon 

 the Erie canal, were $60,000, and upon the Champlain canal, $3,625. The im- 

 provements of the outlet of Onondaga lake had been completed, and the Glen's 

 Falls feeder was in a course of rapid construction. Among the benefits already 

 resulting from the Erie canal, the commissioners showed that the price of wheat 

 west of the Seneca river had advanced fifty per cent. To appreciate this result, 

 it is necessary to understand that wheat is the chief staple of New- York, and 

 that far the largest portion of wheat-growing lands in this state lie west of the 

 Seneca river. 



Attempts were again made in both branches to provide for collecting the local 

 tax. The proposition was lost in the senate by a vote of nineteen to ten, and in 

 the assembly by a division of sixty-five to thirty-one. 



The legislature expressed by resolution a favorable opinion of the inland na\d- 

 gation which New-Jersey proposed to establish between the Delaware and 

 Hudson rivers. A loan of $1,500,000 was authorized for canal purposes ; a 

 survey of the Oswego river was directed to be made, and estimates of the ex- 

 pense of completing the canal from Salina to Lake Ontario. An association to 

 construct such a canal was incorporated, and authority given to the commis- 

 sioners to take the work when completed, leaving the use of its surplus waters 

 to the corporators ; and the eastern termination of the Erie canal was fixed at 

 Albany. 



The canal commissioners reported in 1824 that the Champlain canal was 

 finished ; that both canals had produced revenues during the previous year of 

 one hundred and fifty-three thousand dollars, and that the commissioners had 



