or of America, could supply, in relation to the relative advantages of these different modes of communication. They not only availed themselves of the matured judgment and counsels of practical civil engineers, but carefully inspected all the materials for a correct decision upon this interesting subject, which the advocates of the "direct rail road" from Baltimore to the Ohio could themselves supply. (App. L.)

These inquiries ended in a conviction, which yet remains unshaken, that such a canal as they have planned and partly executed will furnish a much cheaper mode of transporting the heavy products of American industry than any rail road whatever, and especially than one the cost of which shall not much exceed that of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. In this opinion, they are fortified by all the recent information which they have been able to obtain from Europe or America, as well as by the continued practice of various incorporated companies, States and nations. Let it be remarked that not a single canal in Europe or America has yet given way to a rail road. From those very rail ways, in America, on which reliance was early had to establish the superior advantages of rail roads over canals, abundant testimony has been lately derived to disprove the truth of this position, (app. M;) while the reference, so often repeated, to the incomplete experiment now in progress, between the chief western port of England, and her richest inland manufacturing town and most extensive mineral and manufacturing district, if it manifests any thing conclusive on this subject, shows the utter unfitness of this species of communication to the very uneven as well as unimproved surface of the country between the tide of the Atlantic and the Ohio, and to the present condition of the wealth, arts, and population of the United States.

In conformity with these sober and deliberate conclusions of the undersigned, is not only the past, therefore, but the still continued practice of the most enlightened States of the American Union, in all cases where canals are practicable, and no narrow interests or local jealousies arise to obstruct their execution. New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Ohio, may be confidently cited to sustain this authoritative appeal to experience.

A late report on the long contemplated and much desired union of the waters of the Delaware and Raritan adds to these authorities the weight of the Commonwealth of New Jersey, whose proceedings on this subject have been marked by so much prudence and circumspection. In the language of the committee to whom was referred the subject of the Delaware and Raritan canal, addressed to the House of Assembly of that State, in January, 1829, in answer to the suggestion that there is time enough to profit by additional experience, your memorialists admit that "science is daily improving," but, like the authors of that able report, they are not willing, and they trust that they will not be required, to delay a great national enterprise "till time ceases to shed new light," and "science pauses in her career.' "Time is money," and time is escaping, are maxims applying with peculiar force to all such enterprises. The Chesapeake and Ohio canal, the long contemplated object of unceasing solicitude and unwearied labor, can be completed in five as readily as in fifty years. On the other hand, the experiments of the relative utility of rail roads and canals, which have already occupied more than one fourth of a century, are still, it would seem, regarded as inconclusive. Many years would be yet required, were the particular experiment instituted which the Committee on Internal Improvements have proposed, before it would be definitively settled, by the comparative cost,

for a series of years, of the annual repairs of the Baltimore and Ohio rail road, and of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. As the one deteriorated by use, it might be found that the other would improve. The very question so often urged upon the public notice, touching the relative speed of transportation along two such lines of communication, could be tested only by the long continued use of both, with equal amounts of tonnage. (App 0.) That rail roads should be constructed in Great Britain, where canals have so long afforded a monopoly of enormous profits, and have appropriated to themselves every stream capable of being diverted from its natural channel to their support, furnishes no very conclusive argument in favor of their superiority in America, where the navigation of so many considerable rivers yet remains to be improved. Nor is the advance of rail road stock in England to fifty, or even to one hundred per cent. above par, at all more conclusive on this point; since, in the very same market, canal stocks are in some cases a hundred, a thousand, and even two thousand per cent. above par.

The time, though remote, may, and probably will arrive, in America, when mere speed of transportation will warrant the very heavy cost of constructing rail ways of such graduation, and of so many different tracts, as to admit of various velocities for persons and property moving in opposite directions, and of the substitution, on each of those tracts, of locomotive or even of stationary steam engines, of various powers, for the labor of animals. (App. P.) When this period does arrive, it will be proper to legislate for it; and canals may then be profitably turned into rail roads.

With one other view of this subject, your memorialists will conclude this protracted appeal to your consistency, your justice, and your liberality. In asking the subscription which Congress has already granted to the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, it should not, if it could, be forgotten, that much reliance was had on the relation which the Legislature of the Union bears to the cities and people of the District of Columbia.

Separated from their parent States, in compliance with the earnest wishes of those States, and a solemn provision of the Constitution of the United States, they claimed a right to ask their exclusive Legislature to extend to them the fostering care of a paternal Government. Unwilling to call upon that Government for aid without manifesting the inclination as well as the ability to assist themselves, they have supplied to the stock of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, by their corporate subscriptions, and by loans, which they were empowered by Congress to negotiate in Europe or America, a million and a half of dollars; and to this large amount, they have superadded, by individual contributions, half a million more.

The whole value of their subscribed stock, as well as their ability to meet the solemn engagements into which they have entered, must mainly depend, it is evident, on the completion of the great national enterprise to which there large contributions are now devoted.

When those subscriptions were made, the route of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, throughout its entire course from Washington to Pittsburg, had been repeatedly designated, twice by skilful engineers, acting under the authority of the President of the United States, sustained by the resources, and countenanced by the approbation of Congress, whose subscription of a million was founded on the evidence of those surveys.

No mere experiment was then proposed to settle the relative merits of rail roads and canals. On the contrary, the subscriptions of all the stock

holders of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, as well as of the United States, was grounded on an implicit faith in the authority granted them to locate the canal along the left bank of the Potomac, on the estimated cost of its completion conformably to that location, and on the profit to be derived from its continuous prosecution, except in the mountain region, between Cumberland and the mouth of Casselman's river: between those points, and those points alone, a connexion, either by water or by inclined places, was expressly left open to the future decision of the stockholders themselves. It is not difficult to determine that no such subscription would have been made by the United States, by the States, the Corporations, or the individuals associated in this great work, if it had been even suspected, at that period, that the line of continuous canal was to be regarded as an experiment, or would be liable to be broken, in the midst of the valley of the Potomac, by the interference of a rival enterprise, seeking its destruction, in order to appropriate its expected profits to another undertaking, and its commerce to a different market.

These views are forced upon your memorialists by the report to which they have referred. They are here reluctantly, but most respectfully, presented to your consideration, in full confidence that the Congress of the United States will do what to their wisdom, shall seem just, towards the States immediately interested in the object of this memorial, to the Union at large, and to a people whose prosperity and happiness the American Constitution has confided exclusively to their guardianship, protection, and care. Signed by order of the President and Directors, and in their behalf. C. F. MERCER, Pres't of the Ches. & O. C. Comp.

May 24, 1830.

ad Session.

DAVID BROOKS.

JANUARY 18, 1831.

Read, and committed to the Committee of the Whole House, to which is committed the bill (H. R. No. 543) for the further relief of John H. Wendell, &c.

Mr. BoCKEE, from the Committee on Military Pensions, made the fol

lowing REPORT:

The Committee on Military Pensions report the following facts in the case of David Brooks:

until the end of the war.

That he entered the revolutionary army as a lieutenant in the year 1776: that he was taken prisoner at the capture of fort Washington, in New York, and was detained a prisoner for eighteen months; when he was exchanged, and did immediately rejoin the army, and acted as assistant clothing general At the last session of Congress an act was passed, extending to the said David Brooks, as lieutenant in the army of the revobution, the benefits of the act of May 15, 1828, his monthly pay commencing on 1st January, 1830. The petitioner asks the arrears of pay from 3d March, 1826. The committee deem it inexpedient to grant the prayer of the petitioner.