IO 
Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
her limited portion of western trade via. the Essex and Erie 
canals, thus paying tribute to her rival, and so great is the force 
of precedence, that when she was finally connected by rail with 
the waters of the Ohio, New York, by her early facilities was 
prepared to retain the advantage gained in the interim between 
canal and rail transportation, aided by the fact that most goods 
may to-day be shipped to Pittsburg from Philadelphia via. the 
Erie and Beaver canals cheaper than by rail across the Alleghanies. 
The locomotive is admitted to be the god of commercial speed, 
but the still, slow, winding canal is the god that rules the star of 
quantity and cost , and though the illustrious name of Stevenson has 
never been over-praised in prose or song, as the pioneer of that 
wonderful civilizer and indispensable courier of commerce—the 
railway—yet a good water course between important and distant 
terminii, is of all known means superior, not only as a builder of 
cities and commercial centers, but as .a cheaper and safer agent in 
promoting rural prosperity. It may be laid down as a maxim of 
human governments, that any people should not only be provided 
with the means of personal transit and interchange of products, 
into all geographical divisions of their country, as well as the 
return of the avails of their products, but that the cost of such 
means should not be such as to trench upon reasonable profits. 
Otherwise, commercial intercourse must cease, production will de¬ 
cline and population recede. Both railways and canals are neces¬ 
sary, and valuable. The first is “ high-toned” and expensive, the 
latter is the type and essence of frugality. Both, useful. Both 
in their sphere of usefulness, indispensable. 
Not over three decades past, the popular judgment assigned to 
canals the front rank of inland transportation, but as railways be¬ 
gan to checker the country, the iron horse, like a toy in the shop 
windows, attracted and amused the public mind with its speed and 
antics, so that for many years canals were stowed away in the up¬ 
per garrets of contempt, as old rubbish of the past, and even a se¬ 
rious proposition has been made to fill up and abandon the great 
Erie canal as a worthless appendage—a superannuated “fashion ” 
of the old fogy past. But, as in architecture, the style of the man¬ 
sion, and in personal habit, the cut of the coat or clip of the hair, 
old fashions are revived, so the public mind is again being directed 
