on is the
purpose of my giving you the trouble of this discussion. You have
retired from public life. You have weighed this determination, and it
would be impertinence in me to touch it. But would the superintendence
of this work break in too much on the sweets of retirement and repose?
If they would, I stop here. Your future time and wishes are sacred in
my eye. If it would be only a dignified amusement to you, what a
monument of your retirement would it be! It is one which would follow
that of your public life, and bespeak it the work of the same great
hand. I am confident, that would you either alone, or jointly with any
persons you think proper, be willing to direct this business, it would
remove the only objection, the weight of which I apprehend."

[Sidenote: Recommends the opening and improving the inland navigation
of the great rivers in Virginia.]

In the autumn of 1784, General Washington made a tour as far west as
Pittsburgh; after returning from which, his first moments of leisure
were devoted to the task of engaging his countrymen in a work which
appeared to him to merit still more attention from its political, than
from its commercial influence on the union. In a long and interesting
letter to Mr. Harrison, then governor of Virginia, he detailed the
advantages which might be derived from opening the great rivers, the
Potomac and the James, as high as should be practicable. After stating
with his accustomed exactness the distances, and the difficulties to
be surmounted in bringing the trade of the west to different points on
the Atlantic, he expressed unequivocally the opinion, that the rivers
of Virginia afforded a more convenient, and a more direct course than
could be found elsewhere, for that rich and increasing commerce. This
was strongly urged as a motive for immediately commencing the work.
But the rivers of the Atlantic constituted only a part of the great
plan he contemplated. He suggested the appointment of commissioners of
integrity and abilities, exempt from the suspicion of prejudice, whose
duty it should be, after an accurate examination of the James and the
Potomac, to search out the nearest and best portages between those
waters and the streams capable of improvement, which run into the
Ohio. Those streams were to be accurately surveyed, the impediments to
their navigation ascertained, and their relative advantages examined.
The navigable waters west of the Ohio, towards the great lakes, we