NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW:

No. LIV.

NEW SERIES, NO. XXIX.

JANUARY, 1827.

ART. I.-1. Report of the Examination which has been made by the Board of Engineers, with a view to Internal Improvement, &c. February 14, 1825. Printed by Order of the Senate.

2. Information required by a Resolution of the House of Representatives of the 13th ult. in Relation to Expenditures incident or relating to Internal Improvements, for the Years 1824 and 1825. Read and laid upon the Table, April 3,

1826.

3. Report of the Board of Internal Improvement, upon the Subject of a National Road from the City of Washington to New Orleans. April 12, 1826.

AN Act was passed by the Congress of the United States, in April, 1824, authorizing the President' to cause the necessary surveys, plans, and estimates to be made, of such roads and canals, as he may deem of national importance in a commercial or military point of view, or necessary to the transportation of the public mail.' This act was not carried through without an elaborate discussion, nor without calling forth an animated opposition. Although it did not immediately involve the often agitated question, whether Congress has the power, independently of the States, to execute a system of internal improvement, yet it had such a reference to it, as to rouse all VOL. XXIV.-No. 54.

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the apprehensions.connected with that subject, and to justify a course of argument, which ranged through the whole theory and practice of the implied powers of the constitution. It was a rambling and desultory debate, considering the point at isste and many were on the affirmative side at the final vote, who would have been strenuous in the opposition, had the unqualified power been surrendered, which formed the drift of the arguments.

The internal improvement of our country, by means of canals and permanent roads, viewed apart from the power by which they may be constructed, can encounter no opposition from the wise and patriotic. The results of canalling are now involved in no uncertainty. The experiment has been in full operation for about half a century in England, with the most satisfactory, and even triumphant success. From good authority, it appears, that £13,205,117 sterling, affording at this time an aggregate dividend of £782,257 sterling, or about 53 per cent, have been vested in canals in England. By this extensive system of internal improvement, that country has become everywhere intersected with navigable waters; her innermost regions have become accessible to boats from almost all points of her coast, bringing out her treasures from the very bowels of her mountains, and pouring them into the lap of commerce with the same facility, as if nature had cast them upon the verge of the ocean tides. The thousand streams, which used to be running wastefully down her mountains and hills, are now carefully gathered up into reservoirs, and converted, from mere ornaments of the landscape, into powerful auxiliaries of trade. The favored inhabitants of the banks of large rivers, who were formerly accustomed to regard the less fortunate residents in the interior, as cut off from all the profits of commerce, now behold artificial streams descend from all quarters and, regardless of the laws of nature, seek out the nearest route to market, leaving these boasted rivers to flow on in idleness and inutility.

There is scarcely a town in England now, of any considerable population and business, which has not communications of this kind, connecting it with the resources essential to its prosperity and comfort, and with markets for its surplus articles of manufacture and land produce. Her mines, from these circumstances, all become available, and the agriculturist of the interior has the same excitements to industry, as the agriculturist of the, coast or the navigable rivers. These canals, joined with their

auxiliary railways, and with the permanent roads, have doubtless contributed as much to the prosperity of Britain, as her external commerce; and by bringing into operation a mass of enterprise and wealth, unequalled by any other nation, have enabled her to sustain burdens, which have been the subject of falsified prophecies for the last twenty or thirty years.

ments.

It is not surprising, that the United States have heretofore turned so little of their attention to extensive internal improveBoth population and wealth have been too much scattered for such laborious and expensive undertakings, independently of the many political causes, which have tended to discourage them. But we have now, in some degree, a dense and wealthy population, and the commercial facilities of the country bear no proportion to either its wants or its ability. Demand and consumption are no longer confined to a maritime border; a wide spread interior is claiming its supply. For many years after the emigrant to the West left the Atlantic states, he was obliged to content himself with the scanty produce of the new country around him. He had little to ask from abroad, because his means of payment were small. But the wilderness is now an obsolete term with us; and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, there is a well settled and active population, whose wants, and whose competency to gratify them, are nearly the same. The resident on the Ohio and its tributaries, seeks the same comforts, and almost the same luxuries, as the resident on the Hudson or the Delaware, and has nearly the same means to acquire them.

There was something formidable in the contemplation of these extensive works, and it was natural to distrust ourselves, notwithstanding that other countries had been so successful. But, fortunately, we have now an experiment in our own country, which affords every encouragement to science and to enterprise. New York has, in the very outset, completed a canal which surpasses, in some respects, any similar work in the oldest countries. It is connected with a series of lakes, part only of whose shores are at all inhabited, and runs through a country, populous and highly cultivated, it is true, but having many natural facilities for transportation, considerably improved by art; and yet it promises to be, ere many years, a source of great income to the state which achieved it, besides being of incalculable benefit to the country at large. The beneficial results of a work like this are not confined to itself. It becomes, as it were, the parent

of subsidiary works, which would otherwise never have existed; a trunk, whence numerous branches spring, which derive from it their origin and support.*

The first Report mentioned at the head of this article exhibits a preliminary fulfilment of a part of the surveys, intended by the act above cited. That our readers may have the entire plan exhibited in that act, we are induced to make large extracts from the able and comprehensive letter of Mr Calhoun, then Secretary of War, to the President, communicated by him to Congress at the beginning of the Session of 1824-5. As it will probably form the basis of the system of internal improvement, which may occupy the attention of the country for some years to come, it may well claim such permanency of record, as our columns may give it.

The United States may be considered, in a geographical point of view, as consisting of three distinct parts; of which the portion extending along the shores of the Atlantic, and back to the Allegany mountains, constitute one; that lying on the lakes and the St Lawrence, another; and that watered by the Mississippi, including its various branches, the other. These several portions are very distinctly marked by well defined lines, and have naturally but little connexion, particularly in a commercial point of view. It is only by artificial means of communication, that this natural separation can be overcome; to effect which much has already been done. The great canal of New York firmly unites the country of the lakes with the Atlantic, through the channel of the North river; and the national road from Cumberland to Wheeling, commenced under the administration of Mr Jefferson,

The following items relating to the New York canal, are extracted from the report of the committee on Roads and Canals,' presented to the House of Representatives just before its adjournment, May, 1826..

"The tolls on the New York canal, during the year 1824, amounted to $340,761.07; in 1825, to $566,221.51; and for 1826, they are estimated at $750,000, exceeding eight per cent. per annum, on its cost, at the low rate of one cent per ton per mile, on all agricultural and country produce, and three cents for merchandise; which, with the duty on salt and auctions, will give a surplus of $577,000 a year to discharge the principal, after paying the interest on the debt, and all the expenses of repairs, collections, &c. amounting to $550,000. The number of boats and rafts, which passed on the canal, from 9th of April to 12th of December last, was 13,100, carrying 219,074 tons; 185,405 bound to, and 33,669 from the city of New York; amounting to 42 boats per day; and the number of passengers exceeding 40,000.'

unites, but more imperfectly, the Western with the Atlantic

states.

'But the complete union of these separate parts, which geographically constitute our country, can only be effected by the completion of the projected canal to the Ohio and Lake Erie, by means of which the country lying on the lakes will be firmly united to that on the western waters, and both with the Atlantic States, and the whole intimately connected with the centre. These considerations, of themselves, without taking into view others, fairly bring this great work within the provision of the act directing the surveys; but when we extend our views, and consider the Ohio and the Mississippi, with its great branches, but as a prolongation of the canal, it must be admitted to be not only of national importance, but of the very highest national importance, in a commercial, military, and political point of view. Thus considered, it involves the completion of the improvements of the navigation of both these rivers, which has been commenced under the appropriation of the last session of Congress; and also, canals round the Falls of Ohio at Louisville, and Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee river, both of which, it is believed, can be executed at a moderate expense. With these improvements, the projected canal would not only unite the three great sections of the country together, as has been pointed out, but would also unite, in the most intimate manner, all of the states on the lakes and the westtern waters among themselves, and give complete effect to whatever improvements may be made by those states individually. The advantages, in fact, from the completion of this single work, as proposed, would be so extended and ramified throughout these great divisions of our country, already containing so large a portion of our population, and destined, in a few generations, to outnumber the most populous states of Europe, as to leave in that quarter no other work for the execution of the general government, excepting only the extension of the Cumberland road from Wheeling to St Louis, which is also conceived to be of "national importance."

The route, which is deemed next in importance in a national point of view, is the one extending through the entire tier of the Atlantic states, including those on the Gulf of Mexico. By adverting to the division of our country, through which this route must pass, it will be seen, that there is a striking difference in geographical features, between the portions which extend south and north of the seat of government, including the Chesapeake bay, with its various arms, in the latter division. In the northern part of the division, all of the great rivers terminate in deep and bold navigable estuaries, while an opposite character distinguishes the