.MTczMw.MTg5NzU

233

on them, in part, the burdens of the public contribution we may think their benefit, the human character is such that an entailment of a debt, public or private, is commonly honored at first only by its increase, which is followed by the refusal to pay it, and afterwards by disgraceful contentious. Let us then, for providing public buildings which at no distant period must be erected on the place you may approve, proceed with reference to our means avoiding excessive taxation and loans, always attended with early or remote disasters. Instead of imposing our judgment on the operations of future periods, let us act on existing means with the view of transmitting benefits and not obligations and incumbrances, and of being able to say in our testaments, we leave a system and an estate, an example and a benediction, but we bequeath no restrictions on your freedom, on your discretion, on your policy. If we shall judiciously use the capital in our public lands we accomplish all our objects. The Commissioner for dividing the lands owned by Massachusetts and Maine have suspended their proceedings in consequence of the reasons you will perceive they have assigned. Their agency has been highly beneficial, and on some accounts, the prosecution of it seems an object of attention. The topographical knowledge derived, inadequate with partial and distant operations, will soon be required for the forming a plan or system as to those communications destined eventually not only to connect several of our rivers with each other, but to intermingle them with the St. John, and through the St. Lawrence with the great Western Lakes. That system would probably be more perfect as more early arranged, by continuing the division, in as much as the reservation of materials, of ground, and reservoirs, would belong to its details. Its execution would, of course, await the will of the community and the provision of the ample means it would demand.