INTRODUCTION. 115 
Railroads, recently adopted in Europe for general purposes of transportation, 
were at that time unknown on this side of the Atlantic; but the system of inter- 
nal improvement marked out by Clinton, has been found eminently practicable 
with the application of that invention. 
The public debt for the canals in 1825, amounted to seven and a half millions 
of dollars, (all of which, it must be recorded to the honor of the state and the 
country, had been borrowed of American capitalists,) and the annual interest 
thereon to three hundred and seventy-six thousand dollars. The governor esti- 
mated, that the tolls for the year would exceed three hundred and ten thousand 
dollars; that the duties on salt would amount to one hundred thousand dollars, 
and that these, with the other income of the canal fund, would produce a reve- 
nue exceeding by three hundred thousand dollars, the interest on the canal debt. 
He stated also, that ten thousand boats had passed the junction of the canals 
near tide water during the previous season. Remarking that the creative power 
of internal improvement was manifested in the flourishing villages which had 
sprung up or been extended; in the increase of towns, and above all in the pros- 
perity of the city of New-York; and noticing the fact, that three thousand build- 
ings had been erected in that city during the preceding year, Clinton predicted 
that in fifteen years its population would be doubled, and that in thirty years that 
metropolis would be the third city in the civilized world, and the second, if not 
the first, in commerce. 
Adverting to the efforts which Ohio was making to connect Lake Erie, which, 
he remarked, might now be regarded as a prolongation of the Erie canal, with 
the Ohio river, he declared, that he should welcome the commencement and 
hail the consummation of that work as among the most auspicious events in our 
history ; and closed his review of the condition and prospects of the state, with 
the exclamation: “How emphatically does it behove us, in the contemplation 
and enjoyment of these abundant blessings, to remember that we derive them all 
from the great fountain of benevolence!” 
The canal commissioners alluding to the pressure of business on the eastern 
