"To confirm our own judgments, and to be sure that we were not applying an erroneous standard to the work done in the prism of the canals, we invited Professors Peter S. Michie and J. B. Wheeler, of the United States Military Academy at West Point, to go over a large proportion of what we had already visited and to give us the benefit of their judgment about it. Their report is annexed, and will be found to accord in all substantial particulars with the opinions we have felt it our duty to express in our previous report to his Excellency the Governor, and in this communication, in reference to all the contract work on the canals that has fallen under our observation. "_Third_, as to the facilities afforded by the Legislature to contractors for procuring legislative relief: "These facilities appear to have been grossly and corruptly abused under the discretionary power conferred upon the Canal Board by the Legislature. Numbers of contracts have been cancelled when such portions of the work as were let on terms profitable to the contractor had been executed, while those portions of the work that were let upon terms more advantageous to the State were left unexecuted. In such cases it not unfrequently happened that this remaining work was let to the same parties, under a new contract, at much higher rates. When the Canal Board was found to turn a deaf ear to such appeals, these applications for relief would be addressed directly to the Legislature, where the fear of doing injustice, and the want of the time and familiarity with the subject necessary for investigating its details, often permitted the allowance of awards conceived in fraud and without a single legal or equitable merit. "An illustration of this class of abuses will be found in the fifth and seventh reports of this commission to the Governor. For one of them--the case of the award for the relief of John Hand--George D. Lord, a member of the Assembly which made the award, is now under indictment, it appearing that the claim made in his behalf was altogether fraudulent and the alleged proofs fictitious. Another award was also made to George D. Lord of $119,000 for alleged losses under contracts with the State for work in Buffalo harbor. This was, to all appearances, as much greater an abuse of legislative credulity, as the amount exceeded that which was realized under the award to John Hand. The limited technical knowledge of canal administration possessed by a large majority of State legislators, and the claims of other important business upon their attention, make it impossible for them to properly scrutinize appeals of this character, which are usually pressed by designing men, perfectly familiar with all the resources for deception which our complicated canal system afforded, prior to the constitutional amendment of 1874.