Your petitioners are aware that constitutional questions, relative to the application of the national funds to objects of local improvement, have suspended the fulfilment of the request those resolutions contained: and they are also apprised, that the same questions have lately rendered abortive the partial success of another application made to Congress by the local municipal authorities of Albany and Troy, to obtain the aid of the Union to clear the bed of the Hudson of its obstructions, on the old plan of local excavations and contractions, which could never have procured a sufficient depth of water for Atlantic vessels of any great commercial importance, or any permanent one for those of an inferior burthen.

But in reference to the plan of a ship canal, it is obvious that the most rigid adherence to the letter and spirit of the Constitution, as far as it hath been elucidated by the President, could not refuse the character of nationality to that splendid improvement, inasmuch as in the first place, it would favor the navigation of all the maritime States, and the commerce of the greatest number of the internal States, composing altogether more than three-fourths of the confederacy; and in the second place, that it would be located within the sphere, and through the alluvial lands of a navigable river, in which the tides ebb and flow, and which is assimilated in law to an arm of the sea, subject to the jurisdiction delegated to the United States, and of course entitled to their protecting care. If, accordingly, on the strength of this constitutional claim, an appropriation was to be made by Congress, with the sanction of the President, to promote the extension of the Atlantic navigation to the termination of the great water communications opened by this State, between the Atlantic States and the States of the interior, your petitioners presume that the Hudson Ship Canal Company would be entitled to receive the benefit of such a grant, in such manner as the national Legislature, or the Legislature of this State, would direct.

Your petitioners abstain from setting up any further claim to the patronage and assistance of your honorable body; but they will submit to your own paternal consideration, that when an energetic and patriotic effort is wanted, on the part of individual citizens, to accomplish, at their own risk, an expensive work for public accommodation, the means which do not intrude upon the State finances,

ought to be dispensed with a liberal hand, to ensure their success, facilitate their pecuniary operations, and accelerate the glorious result of their labors.

And as in duty bound, your petitioners will ever pray.

TOWN OF SCHODACK.

[N. B. Several other concurring petitions are in circulation in other towns and counties, and will be presented to the Legislature as soon as they are returned.]

MEMORIAL.

On the construction of a Ship Canal around the alluvions and other formations obstructing, below the city of Albany the bed of the Hudson river.

In the year 1804, Edmond Charles Genet presented to the late Governor George Clinton the plan of a lateral canal, to avoid the obstructions of the Hudson, which in his opinion it was impossible to remove by works of art. What he had viewed of the alluvial accretions of that river, and the observations which he had made in other parts of the world on rivers subject to the same accidents, having satisfied him, that neither scouring, dragging, excavating, nor damming, could afford any permanent relief, when natural localities did not concur to render those remedies operative. That venerable patriot approved that plan, and in his speech to the Legislature he recommended the improvement of the navigation be low Albany as an object of considerable importance; but knowing that the mariners of Albany had another plan, which they warmly advocated, he did not think proper, with his usual prudence and reserve, to enter into the controversy, and advised Mr. Genet to do the same. The Legislature being accordingly left, on that subject, to act on unilateral information, appointed, with liberal appropriations, very good and honest captains of sloops State Commissioners to improve the navigation below Albany. Those Commissioners proceeded with the greatest zeal to the execution of their duties, but without preliminary surveys, without ascertaining the fall or geodesick declivity of the seat of the alluvions, without investigating the geological and hydrostatick causes of those deposits, and without calculating the nullifying effect of strong ascending tides against descending currents, they followed, on the strength alone of their own presumptions, the method which, under other circumstances, might have been expedient, of damming and contracting the channel, to procure at particular spots the removal of the obstructions. Under their direction, very extensive and costly works were constructed, the result of which hath been, to transfer alluvions from one place to another, to the injury of the navigation below; to corrode, disintegrate and carry away very valuable pieces