Pblic Documents (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1841 Excerpt: ...had themselves contemplated, when they limited their design to what their own wants required, and their own resources would enable them to accomplish. These parties looked to the organs by which the public feeling, the public opinion, and the public interest, are, under our institutions, so faithfully expressed: they found that feeling, that opinion, and that interest, coincident with their own. They heard the immediate delegates of the people, in a convention appointed to express their sentiments, designate the Chesapeake and Ohio canal as a work of great national importance, calling for an appropriation from the national Treasury equal to its accomplishment. They heard the Executive of the United States recommend it to the earnest consideration of the National Legislature, as an object eminently entitled to its regard, and possessing irresistible claims upon the public means to insure its completion. They found that Congress had accorded with these views; had given a charter of incorporation, by which they prescribed terms which required of tl-e company a canal of sufficient capacity to meet the wishes and the wants of the nation; and, with a full view of the expenses which must be incurred, had contributed a million of dollars towards the great object. They knew the opinion of the distinguished engineer, then in the service of the Government, to which this subject had been specially delegated; and had listened to the expression of his deliberate judgment, that, independently of the commercial benefits which this work promised to bestriw upon the community, the national and political advantages which it held out ought to socure to it from the public Treasury all the means necessary to its completion; and that, without reference to its political conse...