The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1906-03-27
The act seems to- have been framed for
just such cases as the Monis Canal:

son or corporation perpetualsy. and on
May 4, 1871, it was leased perpetually
to the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company.
The Legislature. by act of April 2, 1873,
expressly recognized this lease and au-
thorized the Lehigh Valley Railrcad i
Company to build and operate a branch
canal. The basin of 1867 remained un-
improved, the canal company and the
railroad company paying the State $25,-
GOO year from 1867 to 1880, total Of
$550.OoO.
In 1889 the Lehigh Valley Hailroad
Company applied under the Riparian act
to the Riparian Commissioners for a
grant in fee of the basin. The comrn.s-
sioners collected from the Lehigh Valley
Railroad the said sum of 1857 .142. and
the further sum. which they added. Of
$4,000; and the Lehigh Valley Railroad
Company paid into the treasury OF the
State $4O5, 142 on July II, 1880, and took
a grant in fee of the premises; subject
to the duty to keep open part of it as
a public waterway for other owners.
This reduced the area Of it to the ex-
tent Of about seven acres. The company
had therefore, first and last, paid into
the State Treasury for this grant about
$685., 900. which is believed to be by far
the largest price which had ever been
paid for any state grant. The railroad
company proceeded to build its terminal
on this tract and on a strip 500 feet wide
!. behind it, known as the West Line Grant
TO (which it had paid the State $1ea5, eco.
Counsel Schapperkotter then attacked
Corporation Counsel Record, of Jersey
City, for having raised the point that
the Lehigh Valley had no clear title to
the canal basin.
His mischievous suggestion = he said,
''has been caught up by the little circle
of self-appointed reforIners who Rave
been so noisy of late. They question ev-,
erything and attack everybody who has
property but not votes. They affect to
find great wrongs where no one suspected
them before. Character, industry, faith-
ful administration and development of
great enterprises are no reasen in their
eye for refraining from attacking prop
cray. They are not safe advisers of the
State. They are agitators, filled with
visions of changes and soverthrows which
they believe will be reforms. They have
the agitators' desire for oyerturning and
destroying, but lack, as agitators gem
orally do, the sense of justice and the
respect for the rights of others which
are essential to good Judgment and good
conscience
And SO. the suggestion that the State
may by some technicality and by the use
of its great power, strip stockholders of
their property and turn it into the State
treasury, instead Of shocking them by its
immortality, secures their applause be-
cause it is revolutionary. As to the
proposition to break the Morris Canal
lease, it is a gratuitous attack without
reason and without good sense, The
resolution required the Attorney General
The tshory is that the railroad CONF
high Valley Railroad Company has to
operate the Morris Canal
for the canal is good for nothing as such.
pany, being Pennsylvania corporation,
chartered to operate railroads and not
canals. cannot operate canals. and par
ticu,arly cannot operate canals in this
thorized the lease to anv person or cor
poration, but, after the lease was made,
recognized it, and by legislative authority
authorized the railroad company to ex-
tend the canal; and it has cperatedi.it and
paid the rentals for thirty-6ye years.
What good purpose could be served by
setting the lease aside? The railroad
would be released from paying the rem
tails, and the property would fall into the
hands of the five hundred Morris Canal
stockholders. TO their inrpoyer.shnient
perfdious action? It would injure the
What would the State gain by such
bsnefting it financially. The State would
stockholders, all of whom are citizens
either of New Jersey or of neighborine
states. 1t would annoy the Lehigh Val
ley Railroad Company, although perhaps
benefting it financially he State would
occupy the position fof having lured the
company into the bargain when it seem
ed to the interest Of the State to do so,
and afterward having broken the bargain
| when that seemed in it's Interest.
TheAstate has already taken posi-
tion which is not creditable. The pro