54 New Toek at the "World's Columbian Exposition. 



Toleration and comprehensiveness have been stamped on the administra- 

 tion of public affairs in New York from the earliest period, and history- 

 has fairly given her credit for these. But the credit she deserves for a 

 magnanimous disinterestedness is neither so freely admitted nor so well 

 understood. It is not alone in the records of the Constitutional Conven- 

 tion, or in the part she bore in the struggle which preceded it, that the 

 evidence of this is to be found. In conceiving and executing what was 

 then regarded as the gigantic project of uniting Lake Erie and Lake 

 Champlain with the Hudson river, New Tork conferred on the whole 

 country a benefit whose value has never been fully estimated, and one not 

 to be offset by any immediate gain to herself. 



At the present day the construction of the Erie canal has ceased to be a 

 marvel, but at the time of its commencement, Beventy=five years ago, it 

 stood as the greatest public enterprise of modern history. It was a work 

 of national, nay of international importance, and its magnitude challenged 

 the attention of the world. Yet it was undertaken, singly and unaided, 

 by a State whose finances had barely recovered from the effects of a war 

 which had increased the burden of her debt and paralyzed her commerce, 

 and whose entire population was less than that of the city of Chicago to-day. 

 At the celebration of the completion in 1825 of this great undertaking, 

 Philip Hone, the mayor of New York city, reminded his hearers, in a strain 

 of pardonable pride and exultation, that this was exclusively a State work. 

 He said : " In its infancy its feeble hands were in vain extended to the 

 general government for aid and support, and the State of New York, 

 unaided, unsupported, and relying only upon its own energies and the 

 patriotism of its own citizens, began with zeal, prosecuted with spirit, and 

 has now successfully completed an enterprise which seemed to require the 

 power and the resources of an empire to accomplish." 



New York, doubtless, had her reward, but it was because in uniting the 

 great lakes with the Atlantic she was doing a much greater service to the 

 country at large than could be measured by any immediate gain to herself. 

 " Now," said the men of that day, " the time is near at hand when the 

 minerals of the mountains and the rich products of a fertile soil, ' where 

 prowls the wolf and the huntsman roves,' will jointly increase domestic 

 and foreign commerce, and pour wealth into the lap of industry." " Here- 

 after our wheat will compete in the European markets with that of Poland 

 and Odessa, and a commerce be established important to the merchant and 

 beneficial to the agriculturist." Or, rising to a higher elevation, they found 

 matter for congratulation in the fact that " the canal removes the cloud 

 which hung over our interminable forests ; and the philanthropist and 

 patriot are no longer pained with the idea of the greater portion of our 



