INTRODUCTION. 93 
circumstances of this sort, there can be no doubt that those microcosmic minds 
which, habitually occupied 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 
JJ 
age. 
Passing the advantages w'hich the state must derive from opening a scene so 
vast to the incessant activity of her citizens, the commissioners discussed and 
proved her fiscal ability to complete the enterprise. Impressed with the same 
expansive views which were exhibited in the first efforts of the legislature in 
