ect a toll for navigating the
Hudson, it would be against her interest, for the diminution and
diversion of business, and tax on labor and products, would far exceed
the net proceeds of any such toll. The same principle will apply to
these canals. As some of them, unfortunately, are owned by private
companies, adequate provision should be made, to prevent these aids from
being perverted to purposes of individual speculation. The Erie and
Ontario canal, at the falls of Niagara, and the Superior, Huron, and
Michigan canal (less than a mile long), at the falls of St. Mary, should
be made ship canals, much larger than those of Canada.

The cost of all these works may exceed $100,000,000, but the admirable
financial system of Mr. Secretary Chase, would soon supply abundant
means for their construction. Already the price of gold has fallen
largely, our legal tenders are being funded, by millions, in the
Secretary's favorite 5-20 sixes, and we shall soon have, under his
system, a sound, uniform national currency, binding every State and
citizen to the Union, and fraught ultimately with advantages to the
nation, equal to the whole expense of the war.

In passing down the Susquehanna canal, at Middletown, commences the
canal which, by way of Reading and the Schuylkill, connects Philadelphia
with the Susquehanna and the lakes. Most of this work is already six
feet deep, but the whole route, if practicable, should be enlarged to
the dimensions of the Erie canal.

I have met in the British Museum some documents showing the original
project (absurdly abandoned) for a large canal from the Schuylkill to
the Susquehanna. A slight change will restore this work, and give to
Philadelphia a complete seven-foot canal, via the Schuylkill and
Susquehanna to the lakes, as short as from New York, and through a
richer country, both mineral and agricultural. It appears that
Washington and Franklin both favored this route.

1. Gunboats, and large commercial steamers, could then pass, without
interruption, through all the lakes, to the St. Lawrence, the Hudson,
the Delaware, Susquehanna, Chesapeake Bay, Albemarle Sound, the Ohio,
and Mississippi.

2. In case of war, foreign or domestic, the saving to the Government in
prices of articles they must buy, and in transportation of men,
munitions of war, supplies, and coal, would be enormous. It is believed
that the excess of cost in prices and transportation during this
rebellion, occasioned by th