Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 14).djvu/95

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CLINTON'S MEMORIAL
91

tered and surmounted obstacles which we should not meet with. For instance, the Grand Junction canal passes more than once the great ridge which divides the waters of England; ours will pass over a country which in comparison is champaign.

But it is said that the price of labor in our country is so much above what it is in England, that we must add greatly to the cost of her canals in estimating the expense of ours. But that is certainly a false conclusion, for not only must the price of the land and the adventitious objects which have been before referred to, be deducted from the cost of the foreign canals, but we must consider that there will be almost as great a difference in our favor in the cost of the material and brute labor, as there is in favor of England as to human labor, and it is well known that so much human labor is not now required on canals as formerly. Machines for facilitating excavation have been invented and used with great success.

Mr. Gallatin's report on canals contains several estimates of the cost of contemplated ones. From Weymouth to Taunton, in Massachusetts, the expense of a canal of