, something that could
be done. It might be only a very little something, but still that was
better than nothing to the strong man ever dealing with facts as they
actually were on this confused earth, and not turning aside because
things were not as they ought to be. Thus many a battle and campaign
had been saved, and so inland navigation played its part now. It
helped, among other things, to bring Maryland and Virginia together,
and their combination was the first step toward the Constitution of
the United States. There is nothing fanciful in all this. No one would
pretend that the Constitution of the United States was descended from
Washington's James River and Potomac River companies. But he worked at
them with that end in view, and so did what was nearest to his hand
and most practical toward union, empire, and the development of
national sentiment.

Ah, says some critic in critic's fashion, you are carried away by your
subject; you see in a simple business enterprise, intended merely to
open western lands, the far-reaching ideas of a statesman. Perhaps
our critic is right, for as one goes on living with this Virginian
soldier, studying his letters and his thoughts, one comes to believe
many things of him, and to detect much meaning in his sayings and
doings. Let us, however, show our evidence at least. Here is what he
wrote to his friend Humphreys a year after his scheme was afoot: "My
attention is more immediately engaged in a project which I think big
with great political as well as commercial consequences to the
States, especially the middle ones;" and then he went on to argue the
necessity of fastening the Western States to the Atlantic seaboard
and thus thwarting Spain and England. This looks like more than a
money-making scheme; in fact, it justifies all that has been said,
especially if read in connection with certain other letters of this
period. Great political results, as well as lumber and peltry, were
what Washington intended to float along his rivers and canals.

In this same letter to Humphreys he touched also on another point
in connection with the development of the West, which was of vast
importance to the future of the country, and was even then agitating
men's minds. He said: "I may be singular in my ideas, but they are
these: that, to open a door to, and make easy the way for those
settlers to the westward (who ought to advance regularly and
compactly), before we make any stir about the naviga