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INTRODUCTION. 
The tolls on all the canals in this state, during the season of navigation in 1841, 
were $2,034,878, exceeding those of 1840 by $259,831, equal to an increase of 
fourteen and a half per cent; and those of 1831, by the sum of $811,077, equal 
to an increase in ten years, of more than sixty-six and one quarter per cent. 
The New-York and Erie railroad, four hundred and fifty-one miles in length, 
is now one-half completed, and may be brought into use in 1844, if prosecuted 
with the same energy as heretofore. The enlargement of the Erie canal is one- 
half finished ; nearly all its mechanical structures having been already replaced 
with works of great strength and durability, and it may be finished within three 
years, if prosecuted with due diligence. The Auburn and Rochester railroad 
has been brought into profitable operation; portions of the Long Island railroad, 
nearly half of the Genesee Valley canal, and the eastern section of the New-York 
and Erie railroad, have been opened, and are now usefully employed. Our rail¬ 
way communications were extended one hundred and sixty miles within the last 
year, and their present aggregate length is seven hundred and forty-seven miles; 
and the total length of our canal navigation is eight hundred and three miles. 
Meanwhile, enlightened citizens of this state and of Pennsylvania have opened 
an active and prosperous exchange of gypsum, salt, coal and iron, by the Che¬ 
mung canal, and by the Ithaca and Owego railroad. There is reason to expect 
that the continuous line of railroad, now reaching from Albany to Batavia, will 
be extended to Lake Erie within the year; while the citizens of Albany and Bos¬ 
ton have connected our interior thoroughfares with the system of similar works 
in the eastern states, consisting of one hundred and fifty-two miles of canals, and 
eight hundred miles of railways; thus opening to us facilities for social intercourse 
with the people of those prosperous communities, and convenient access to their 
manufactures, granaries, seaports and fisheries. This important union of the 
two great northern systems was regarded as marking an era in the progress of 
internal improvement, so important, and excited so deep an interest, that the 
governors and legislatures of the states whose combining enterprise had secured 
the auspicious result, assembled at Springfield, in Massachusetts, a point equi- 
