href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@41008@[email protected]#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[22] It is affirmed that these communications were not inspired by the prophetic words of Morris;[23] they were fourteen in number, and were contributed weekly from October, 1807, to March, 1808. Hawley had thought out his problem with great seriousness and detail, and had splendidly planned a canal from Buffalo to Utica, where improved navigation on the Mohawk was to be depended upon. The cost he estimated at five millions. It is not at all unlikely that Hawley’s attention was the more quickly attracted to this subject because of the celebrated message of President Jefferson to Congress in this fall of 1807, just when Hercules was writing his articles.

It was probably the general discussion of this great theme, more than the result of any one influence, which led to the crystallization of the movement, when on February 4, 1808, Joshua Forman, a member of the New York legislature, from Onondaga County, offered the following bill:

“Whereas the President of the United States by his message to Congress, delivered at their meeting in October last, did recommend that the surplus money in the treasury, over and above such sums as could be applied to the extinguishment of the national debt, be appropriated to the great national objects of opening canals and making turnpike roads. And whereas the state of New York, holding the first commercial rank in the United States, possesses within herself the best route of communication between the Atlantic and western waters, by means of a canal, between the tide waters of the Hudson river and Lake Erie,—through which the wealth and trade of that large portion of the United States, bordering on the upper lakes, would for ever flow to our great commercial emporium. And whereas the legislatures of several of our sister states, have made great exertions to secure to their own states the trade of that wide extended country, west of the Alleganies, under natural advantages vastly inferior to those of this state. And whereas it is highly important that these advantages should as speedily as possible be improved, both to preserve and increase the commerce and national importance of this state:—Resolved, (if the honourable the senate concur herein) that a joint committee be appointed to take into consideration the propriety of exploring, and causing an accurate survey to be made of the most eligible and direct route for a canal to open a communication between the tide waters of the Hudson river and Lake Erie; to the end that congress may be enabled to appropriate such sums as may be necessary to the accomplishment of that great national object.” In the general appropriation bill now passed the sum of $600 was allotted to a survey of this proposed canal and the work was done by James Geddes, whose report, at a later day, became important.[24]

Mr. Forman’s motion passed, but amounted to nothing. In 1810 Thomas Eddy, the treasurer of the old Western Inland Lock Navigation Company, called on General Platt, a member of the New York senate, and the two conversed seriously about the great plan which was slowly coming more and more to the front. Platt affirmed that he would offer a resolution in the legislature looking toward increasing public interest in the great dream of the farthest-seeing men of New York. Perhaps the two drafted this resolution; at least, the very next day Platt handed De Witt Clinton a draft of a resolution. Clinton liked it. Its author thereupon offered it in the senate and Clinton supported it and it passed, March 13, 1810. It began: “Whereas, the agricultural and commercial interests of the state, require that the inland navigation from the Hudson river to lake Ontario and lake Erie, be improved and completed on a scale commensurate to the great advantages derived from the accomplishment of that important object: And whereas, it is doubtful whether the resources of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company are adequate to such improvements:

“Therefore resolved, that if the honourable the assembly consent herein, that Gouverneur Morris, Stephen Van Rensselaer, De Witt Clinton, Simeon De Witt, William North, Thomas Eddy and Peter B. Porter, be and they are hereby appointed commissioners for exploring the whole route, examining the present condition of the said navigation, and considering what further improvements ought to be made therein; and that they be authorized to direct and procure such surveys as to them shall appear necessary and proper in relation to these objects; and that they report thereon to the legislature, at their next session, presenting a full view of the subjects referred to them, with their estimates and opinion thereon.”[25] On April 5 following $3,000 was appropriated for the expenses of the surveys called for in the above resolution.[26]

Accordingly the commissioners named explored the country between the Hudson and Lake Erie through which the prospective waterway would run, in the summer of 1810 with Jesse Hawley’s contributions of 1807-08 in their hands. At the next meeting of the legislature they presented an elaborate report. It would seem that the committee had passed over the route of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company from Schenectady to Lake Ontario; James Geddes, the experienced engineer who had given some little study to the region under survey, made a map and a few rough estimates. The report opens with the declaration that the idea of making small rivers navigable had long ago been exploded in Europe; this was a polite way of saying that the days of the Lock Navigation Company were fairly numbered. The report affirms that a canal parallel with the rivers improved by the Navigation Company (Mohawk, Wood Creek, and Oswego) is practicable as far as Oswego Falls (Rochester). The twelve remaining miles to Lake Ontario might well be covered by a railway.

However, the committee had another plan, that of building the canal straight west from the Oswego to Lake Erie, avoiding Lake Ontario’s winds and waves entirely. Certain interesting commercial questions were here involved. Even with the advantages offered by the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company, New York and Albany could not hold their own in competition with Montreal. Freight rates down the St. Lawrence were marvelously cheap; fifty cents a hundredweight, only, was charged by descending boatmen from Kingston to Montreal—one-half the early rate from Buffalo to New York on the Erie Canal when it was at last built. The rate of freight up the St. Lawrence was only one dollar per hundredweight. If any point east of Niagara Falls was made the terminus of New York’s canal, it was feared that Montreal would profit by it more, perhaps, than the cities it was intended to build up and benefit.

Mr. Geddes favored