University of Virginia Library

SPECIAL MESSAGE TO CONGRESS.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:

I communicate to Congress copies of an act of the legislature
of New York relating to a canal from the Great Lakes
to Hudson River. In making the communication I consult
the respect due to that State, in whose behalf the commissioners
appointed by the act have placed it in my hands for
the purpose.

The utility of canal navigation is universally admitted.
It is no less certain that scarcely any country offers more

extensive opportunities for that branch of improvements than
the United States, and none, perhaps, inducements equally
persuasive to make the most of them. The particular undertaking
contemplated by the State of New York, which marks
an honorable spirit of enterprise and comprises objects of
national as well as more limited importance, will recall the
attention of Congress to the signal advantages to be derived
to the United States from a general system of internal communication
and conveyance, and suggest to their consideration
whatever steps may be proper on their part toward its introduction
and accomplishment. As some of those advantages
have an intimate connection with the arrangements and exertions
for the general security, it is at a period calling for those
that the merits of such a system will be seen in the strongest
lights.