given at all, or shall be altogether withheld. Others may be content with a system that erects free-schools and offers gratuitous instruction; but I trust I shall be allowed to entertain the opinions, that no system is perfect that does not accomplish what it proposes; that our system is, therefore, deficient in comprehensiveness, in the exact proportion of the children that it leaves uneducated; that knowledge, however acquired, is better than ignorance; and that neither error, accident, nor prejudice, ought to be permitted to deprive the state of the education of her citizens. Cherishing such opinions, I could not enjoy the consciousness of having performed my duty, if any effort had been omitted, which was calculated to bring within the schools all who are destined to cxercise the rights of citizenship; nor shall I feel that the system is perfect, or liberty safe, until that object be accomplished. Not personally concerned about such misapprehensions as have arisen, but desirous to remove every obstacle to the accomplishment of so important an object, I very freely declare that I seek the education of those whom I have brought before you, not to perpetuate any prejudices or distinctions which deprive them of instruction, but in disregard of all such distinctions and prejudices. I solicit their education, less from sympathy, than because the welfare of the state demands it, and can not dispense with it. As native citizens, they are born to the right of suffrage. I ask that they may at least be taught to read and write; and, in asking this, I require no more for them than I have diligently endeavored to secure to the inmates of our penitentiaries, who have forfeited that inestimable franchise by crime, and also to an unfortunate race, which, having been plunged by us into degradation and ignorance, has been excluded from the franchise by an arbitrary property-qualification incongruous with all our institutions. I have not recommended, nor do I seek, the education of any class in foreign languages, or in particular creeds or faiths; but fully believing with the author of the Declaration of Independence, that even error may be safely tolerated where reason is left free to combat it, and therefore indulging no apprehensions from the influence of any language or creed among an enlightened people, I desire the education of the entire rising generation in all the elements of knowledge we possess, and in that tongue which is the universal language of our countrymen. To me the most interesting of all our republican insti

in any

tutions is the common school. I seek not to disturb, manner, its peaceful and assiduous exercises, and least of all with contentions about faith or forms. I desire the education of all the children in the commonwealth in morality and virtue, leaving matters of conscience where, according to the principles of civil and religious liberty established by our constitution and laws, they rightfully belong.

The policy of the state in regard to internal improvements has been a subject of much difficulty. In 1839, the state having completed the Erie and Champlain, the Chenango, the Oswego, the Cayuga and Seneca, the Chemung, and the Crooked Lake canals, and having thus opened to the city of New York an inland navigation of four thousand five hundred miles, was found engaged in enlarging the Erie canal to the dimensions of seventy feet in width by seven feet in depth, in making the Genesee Valley and Black River canals, and in aiding by the loan of its credit the construction of the New York and Erie, the Auburn and Syracuse, the Ithaca and Owego, and the Catskill and Canajoharie railroads. The report of the comptroller showed that the debt which had been contracted for the construction of the Erie and Champlain canals was virtually paid; that the liabilities for the completed lateral canals were about three and a half millions of dollars, which, added to the remaining debt of the state, exclusive of debts assumed for the unfinished works, made an aggregate of four and a half millions of dollars. The estimated expense of the works in progress, as appeared by the report of the canal commissioners, was about fifteen and a half millions of dollars; which, if added to the existing debt, would have made an aggregate of about twenty millions, the annual interest of which would be one million. The tolls of the Erie and Champlain canals, after deducting the expenses of collection, had increased from $839,925 in 1826, to $1,504,384 in 1836; and although the tolls were diminished during the commercial revulsion of 1837 and 1838, yet their future increase could not be subject for doubt, and it was equally certain that they would be accelerated and augmented by the growth of the trade from the western states, and by the reduction of the expense of navigating the Erie canal when it should be enlarged. The canal commissioners communicated to the legislature their opinions, that in a few years after

the completion of the enlargement, the tolls would amount to three millions of dollars. If from this sum even one million of dollars were to be allowed for the expense of superintendence and repairs, the enlarged Erie canal would yield a revenue of two million of dollars, double the amount required to pay the interest on the debt of twenty millions of dollars. The annual net revenue of the state, after the completion of the enlargement, would therefore be one million of dollars. The view thus taken in 1839, of the existing and anticipated condition of the state was regarded by me as justifying the vigorous prosecution of the public works, and the expression of a confident hope that the time had come when the state might realize the long-cherished expectation of an extension of her system of internal improvements. Experience has fully confirmed the positions then assumed, so far as they depended on the revenue from the canals. The tolls during the season of navigation in 1840, were $1,775,747 57. The legislature of 1836 had directed stocks to be issued to the amount of two millions eight hundred thousand dollars, for the construction of the Genesee Valley and Black River canals; and the legislature of 1838, under an earnest recommendation by my predecessor of a vigorous and speedy prosecution of the enlargement of the Erie canal, had appropriated four millions of dollars to that object. The canal commissioners, under an explicit direction of the legislature to put under contract, with as little delay as possible, such portions as would best secure the completion of the entire enlargement with double locks on the whole line, had made contracts for one half of the whole improvement. Those who, in 1839, came into the conduct of public affairs addressed themselves, in good faith, to the performance of their duties in regard to the public works. A sudden change, however, then occurred. The official report of the retiring comptroller, unlike the glowing view of the fiscal condition of the state, which had, in 1836, induced the legislature to undertake the construction of three stupendous works, and had impelled the legislature of 1838 to expedite the prosecution of that one which was more expensive than all the improvements which the state had made, exhibited a dark picture of irredeemable debt and perpetual taxation. The policy to which, under the auspices of the previous administration, the state was committed, and to which it had already devoted twenty inillions of dollars, besides having pledged its credit in aid of

associated enterprise to the extent of four a half millions, was now represented as involving the people in a debt of forty millions of dollars; and what was still more extraordinary, all the responsibility of the policy was assigned, not to the administration under whose auspices it had been adopted, nor to the legislatures of 1836 and 1838, by whom all the appropriations had been made, but to an administration upon which had devolved the duty of finishing works long before begun, by which no money had been expended, and under which no appropriation had been made. In a report made in 1839, the discovery was promulgated by the late comptroller, that the Erie and Champlain canals, whose revenues had been relied upon by the legislatures of 1836 and 1838, as justifying an expenditure of twenty millions of dollars in new enterprises, had never yielded revenues equal to the interest on their cost. Although the dimensions of the enlarged canal had, in 1835, been fixed at seventy feet in width by seven feet in depth, and although one half of this great work was under contract, it was pretended to be further discovered that the enlargement had been undertaken upon a scale absurd in magnitude and profligate in expense. It was proposed to reduce the dimensions to sixty feet in width and six feet in depth; and it was contended that no enlargement whatever would be necessary for the purposes of trade for a period of ten, twenty, or thirty years. It was maintained by the opponents of internal improvement, that the construction of the Black River and Genesee Valley canals and the maintenance of the faith of the legislature, pledged in 1838 to the New York and Erie Railroad Company, were in policy as inconsistent with the true interests of the state, and as useless and dangerous, as would be the creation of titles of nobility with patents of numerous landed estates, requiring an outlay of twenty-five millions of dollars, and an annual stipend of more than one million to be raised by taxes upon the people. It was also insisted that the first business of legislation should be to repeal the laws authorizing the construction of the Genesee Valley and Black River canals, and also the laws authorizing loans to canal and railroad companies, to stop the enlargement of the Erie canal, or circumscribe it within reasonable bounds, to raise the tolls on the lateral canals so that the revenues from those canals might pay the interest on their cost and the annual expense of their repairs, and

to relinquish such of them as could not be made to do so.* And all this was urged, as if the sudden abandonment of those enterprises would not involve in wretchedness thousands of families, and as if our state, whose successful policy had been adopted as a model by other states, and had elicited the admiration of mankind, had suddenly become destitute of wisdom, honor, and good faith. History may safely be charged with the duty of assigning the reasons for such singular inconsistencies. It is necessary, however, for the present purpose, to observe that the same canal commissioners who had, in 1836, estimated the cost of the works which the state then assumed, at fifteen and a half millions of dollars, when required, in 1839, to re-examine their estimates, reported the cost of the same works at thirty and a half millions, and that, consequently, the debt to which the state had become committed arose from twenty millions to thirty-five millions, requiring an annual expenditure for interest of one million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The discovery of this extraordinary error in the estimates of the commissioners happened in a conjuncture when, although the credit of many of the states was brought to a crisis, the spirit of internal improvement pervaded the community, and our fellow-citizens, relying upon the views of our resources before presented, were looking confidently to the public treasury for appropriations to various improvements in which they justly felt an absorbing interest. The immediate results at home and abroad were a severe shock to confidence in the faith of the state, an alarm for its ultimate solvency, jealousies in each region in regard to improvements immediately beneficial to others, and impatience in every portion of the state for such immediate and large appropriations as would secure the construction of favored works before the apprehended catastrophe should take place. It was doubted for a time whether the tendency of all this was to a desperate compromise by reckless expenditure, or to an immediate suspension of all the public works.

The policy recommended by me in this emergency was to retrench expenditures, and persevere in the construction of the public works with moderation and economy, to refer the plans of all the unfinished improvements, including the enlargement

*See Reports of the Hon. A. C. Paige, and the Hon. Samuel Young in the senate, 1840.-Ed.