The expenses of the engineering department to April 2, 1817, had been $14,462, and the total for exploration and surveying $42,957. The act to provide funds for the canal and also funds for the redemption of the funded debt of the state was passed April 21, 1818. This law authorized the comptroller to sell certain three per cent United States bonds, and to apply the proceeds to the redemption of the funded debt; the comptroller was ordered to borrow one million dollars at six per cent after advertising for proposals for the same. The governor was empowered to appoint a cashier of a New York bank to issue certificates of stock, the principal to be redeemable until 1823, taxed at one mill on the dollar; state deposits were to be made in any bank in New York that would loan one million dollars. The act of March, 1819, authorized the borrowing of $700,000 yearly for the building of the canal; on March 25 this was reduced to $600,000; an assessment of a tax upon all lands within twenty-five miles of the canal, formerly made, was at this time suspended. By a law of April 7, 1819, the commissioners were again authorized to borrow a sum not exceeding (together with the net income of the canal fund) $600,000. The board of commissioners of the canal fund was now reduced to three members (January 20, 1820) at a salary of $2,500 each. To meet the extraordinary expenses of 1819, as previously detailed, the commissioners were empowered, April 12, 1820, to borrow $122,500 at six per cent interest; three fourths of this was to be equally divided between the Eastern and Western sections; the remainder was for the Champlain Canal. The first tolls were levied on the Erie Canal July, 1820; in that year $5,244 was collected, $450 of it from the old canal of the Western Inland Lock Navigation Company at Little Falls. By a concurrent resolution in the legislature, the comptroller, A. McIntyre, was allowed to put into execution a plan for a sinking fund for the extinguishing of the canal debt, January 12, 1821. He took, as a basis of his calculation, a debt of $5,905,456 and a revenue of $210,000; the loan of $600,000, with revenues, was to be continued as heretofore. By this plan the debt was to be extinguished in 1842, at which time the revenue, it was estimated, would be about $580,000, and the canal tolls, $150,000 beyond expenditures for repairs.