and Ohio canal, which was not extended further west than Cumberland. SCARCITY OF CAPITAL FOR CANALS. On account of local needs, few canal or navigation companies had difficulty in obtaining their first subscriptions, but most of them experienced trouble in collecting assessments and in obtaining additional subscriptions. This timidity of investors, it now appears, was not without ground, for few of the private canal companies were able to bring their construction work to completion, and fewer still paid any dividends to their stockholders. The Middlesex canal was profitable until the building of a parallel line of railroad; the Montague canal, also in Massachusetts, yielded a fair return during the first twenty years that followed its completion in 1800. The Delaware and Schuylkill canal may be cited as a third exception. But it early became evident that public works of the number and magnitude required could be constructed only at national expense. As the constitution contains no direct provision for internal improvements, the subject became a party question. From the first Congress had appropriated money for lighthouses, public piers, buoys and other aids to navigation, and about such action there had been no dispute, for it was agreed that these matters lay strictly within federal jurisdiction. From the first, also, Congress had been petitioned for appropriations for internal improvements. Most of these demands were local in character, and so were easily disposed of; but when the directors of the Chesapeake and Delaware canal asked Congress to supply the funds which they had been unable to obtain from sales of shares, the question was forced to an issue. Two facts were incontestable, the general importance of the work, and the ability of the national government to carry it on in view of the revenue surplus in the treasury. In another way Congress had already committed itself to the support of public works. So long as the country was made up of states bordering on the Atlantic seaboard, improvements were matters of interest to all alike, but with the admission of new states in the interior, and the prospect of future accessions to the westward as the country expanded, an element of injustice seemed to enter these appropriations, which benefited the seaboard states at the expense of all. The feeling of discontent was intensified by the fact that the favored states were more thickly settled, and therefore better able to incur the expense. With the admission of Ohio, however, this was remedied by the establishment of the five per cent. land fund, and the self-interest of the seaboard was appealed to by the argument that the building of roads into the West would so stimulate sales of the public lands as to increase the national revenues.