The Excavation Of The Erie Canal, The Parent Of All The Subsequent
Improvements Of A Similar Nature In The United States, Opened-Up For
Settlement A Vast Country To The Westward, Which Would Otherwise For
Many Years Have Remained A Wilderness, Unfit For The Habitation Of
Man.
The boundless success of this experiment necessarily led to
all the other similar undertakings.
The superior advantages Canada
enjoyed in her river and lake navigation, imperfect as that
navigation was, operated in a manner rather to retard than to
accelerate improvements of this kind; while the construction of
the Erie Canal was a matter of prospective necessity, in order to
provide for a rapidly increasing population and immigration. In the
same manner, the recent completion of the works on the St. Lawrence,
and the enlargement of the Welland Canal, connecting Lakes Erie and
Ontario, will just as necessarily be followed by similar results,
with the additional advantage of the whole colony being greatly
benefitted by the commerce of the United States, in addition to
her own.
We have now, thanks to responsible government, municipal councils,
and common schools, no longer any reason to consider their
institutions better calculated to develope the resources of the
colony, than our own. Our interests are almost identical, and with
our canals and railroads on both sides mutually beneficial, our
former hostility has merged into a friendly rivalry in the march of
intellect, and we may now truly say that, without wishing for any
change in political institutions, which are most congenial to the
feelings of the people where they exist, each country now sincerely
rejoices in the prosperity of its neighbour.
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