The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1859-02-08
NUMBER 1856.

memOrlallStS nave erected costly mills de-
pendent upon that power. Nearly the
whole power on the canal from the State
line to Lafayette, is held by leases direct
from the State, running for many years
and the property built up under such leases,
can not be less in the aggregate than $200,.
600. All this property will be utterly
valueless on the abandonment of the canal
and the State is especially bound in every
such lease to make good all losses and
damages for the failure to supply the power
therein stipulated.
Your memorialists urge and insist that the
moral obligation is no less binding on the
State to defend those of them who hold like
leases under the Board of Trustees, inas-
much as the Wabash and Erie Caual is a
public institution of the State of Indiana,
projected by her, and commended to the
faith and confidence of her citizens by nu-
merous solemn acts of the Legislature, and
inasmuch as the said Board of Trustees
must be hei3 in legal construction, as well
as by practical position, the agents of the
State as well as of the Bondholders.
Therefore leases of power on the canal,
held by your memorialists, and made by
the Board of Trustees, and investments
made by their authority and invitation, ren-
dered fruitless by the desertion of the canal
must in like manner become a source of
just reclamation upon the State.
Many of your mernorialists are land-hold-
ers, whose farms and fields were intersected
in the construction of this canal, and who,
estimating the benefits to be derived from
that work superior to the injuries done to
their estates, made no claim for damages
but encouraged its construction, and suffered
the agents and contractors engaged therein,
to excavate their land-to haul away their
soil-and TO accumulate upon their fields
large amounts of spoil earth taken from the
bed of the canal. The enjoyment of the
canal as a navigable work was deemed a
compensation for these acts, which would
othe.v Sc have been insuferable; and your
me, IialistS of this class now protest that
tie State can not allow the same to be de-
serted, and go to neglect, without providing
for the satisfaction of damages which will
accrue in this manner.
But it is not possible to express in full the
various particulars and directions from
which claims for reclamation against the
State will flow up to future Legislatures
arising from the destruction of this canal
interest. Enough is stated to show that
upon the score of financial interest it be-
hooves your honorable body to move quick
ly in this behalf, and to arrest the downfall
of work which is a great pillar sustaining
our public prosperity.
Your memorialists further urge, that the
solemn obligation and duty of the State of
Indiana is pledged to the preservation of
this canal by her acceptance of large grants
of lands made by the Government of the
United States to aid in its construction, the
condition or provisions of which grants be-
ing " that the said canal, when completed,
shall be and forever remain public high
way fer the use of the Government of the
United States, free from any toll or any
other charge whatever, for any property of
the United States or persons in their ser
vice, passing through the same" Those
lands, amounting to 100000 acres, were
received and sold by the State for her use
and benefit, and these are the conditions
upon which she rejoiced TO accept and ap-
propriate the same. Can the State of Indi-
ana now deny the conditions upon which
she received these munifcent grants from
the Government of the United States, or
can she refuse or neglect to fulfill to the
utmost extent, every obligation laid upon
her by her acceptance and enjoyment there
of?
Your memoralsts solicit the attention of
your honorable body to the consideration of
the obligations resting upon the State of In
diana toward the State of Ohio, arising out
of compact between these States, execut-
ed on their behalf by Wyllis Silliman, Com
missioner on behalf of the State of Ohio,
and Jeremiah Sullivan, Commissioner on
behalf of the State of Indiana, at Cincinnati,
on the Sd day of October, 1929. Though
this compact contains no special stipulation
in ,cords, that the State of Indiana shall for
ever preserve the navigation of the Wabash
and Erie Canal, yet that obligation is more
than implied in the objects of that compact
and in the tenor of its provisions. 1t is
stipulated therein that the State of Indi-
ana shall complete that part OF said canal
which shall be within the limits of said
State, within fifteen years from the first day
of January, 1890" Also, "that the said
canal when finished shall be open to the
navigation of the citizens of other States of
the Union" &c. And, also, "that this
contract shall be perpetual between the
States"
The obligation of Ohio to construct and
maintain the canal from the State line
through her territory to Lake Erie, and the
performance of her obligation so to do was
the consideration upon which the undertak-
ings of the State of Indiana were based
And that the State of Indiana would con-
struct and maintain her proposed canal as
grand medium of business for the extension
thereof, through Ohio to the lake, furnished
the motive to that State TO undertake the
construction of that extension.
Can the State of Indiana, therefore, now
suffer the Wabash and Erie Canal within
her borders to go down without slur upon
her good faith toward her sister State, ard
without blemish upon her character which
will endure forever? Your memorialists are
informed that the subject has already be-
come one of solcitude to the citizens and
government of the State of Ohio, and that
the State of Indiana will be appealed to by
that government to protect the canal inter
est of the two States as involved in that
compact and to preserve inviolate the obli-
cations thereby assumed.
An imposing error has obtained ground
that this susject is one of local bearing on
ly, and that the parts of the State not imme-
diately interested in the canal as highway,
have no interest in the question of its pre-
servation