INTRODUCTION. 113 



decided that the Erie canal ought to be united with the Niagara river at Black 

 Rock, and terminate at Buffalo. 



Myron Holley now resigned the office of canal commissioner, and laws were 

 passed appropriating one million of dollars for canal purposes, and directing a 

 survey for a canal from Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence, with a view to 

 complete the inland navigation between that river and the Hudson. 



On the twelfth of April, 1824, John Bowman presented to the senate a con- 

 current resolution, that " De Witt Clinton, Esq. be and he is hereby removed from 

 the office of canal commissioner ;" and it was carried on the same day through the 

 senate, by a vote of twenty-one to three, and through the assembly by a vote of 

 sixty-four to thirty-four. 



As soon as a partial navigation of the canals had commenced, the government 

 of the United States asserted a pretension to exact tonnage duties thereon. The 

 legislature of this state, at its adjourned session, instructed its senators and repre- 

 sentatives in congress to use their utmost endeavors to prevent such unjust and 

 impolitic exactions ; and the claim of the government of the United States, 

 although not formally relinquished, has never since been urged. 



On the reassembling of the legislature in January, 1825, De Witt Clinton, 

 who, in November of the jjreceding year, had been again called to the office of 

 chief magistrate, congratulated the legislature ujion the prospect of the imme- 

 diate completion of the Erie canal, and the reasonable certainty that the canal 

 debt might soon be satisfied, ^vithout a resort to taxation, without a discontinu- 

 ance of effi^rts for similar improvements, and without staying the dispensing hand 

 of government in favor of education, literature, science and productive industry. 

 Earnestly renewing his recommendation that a board of internal imjirovement 

 should be instituted, he remarked that the field of operations was immense, and 

 the harvest of honor and profit unbounded; and that if the resources of the 

 state should be wisely applied and forcibly directed, all proper demands for im- 

 portant avenues of communication might be satisfied. The primary design of 

 our system of artificial navigation, which was to open a communication between 



Intr, 15 



