The construction of this canal would appear to be the great work of that age, something upon which the future of the old commonwealth is well-nigh staked, and in which the whole country is greatly concerned. Patriotism is appealed to, and the traditionary enterprise of Massachusetts is invoked in behalf of the project. The hardihood and perseverance of her sons are adverted to in connection with the settlement of the new States of the West. And this leads the commissioners to indulge in the following lofty strain: “Shall it then be said that their sires, and those who have been reared and dwell in the land of their nativity, have degenerated; that Massachusetts has lost her pristine energy, and is doomed to witness the grand progress of internal improvement in more youthful States, and linger in the rear of this eventful age, when the march of the human race, to its most exalted destinies, has acquired an impetus unprecedented in the annals of the world? The whole people will indignantly answer, No. They will merit and maintain the reputation which their ancestors acquired, firmly meet the moral and physical demands of the times, and urge forward those public works which are required to extend and increase the facilities of intercourse with every section of the Union. They will neither be appalled by the difficulties which must be encountered, nor by the expense which will necessarily be incurred. What their wants demand they have the spirit and ability to achieve; for to free and enlightened citizens nothing is impossible which the public good requires should be accomplished.”

But the rhetoric and the appeal to Massachusetts spirit were wasted on the air. The day of canals was passing away, except in Holland. The day of railroads was at hand. The English miners had for some time been using tramways for the conveyance of their coal, and the Stockton and Darlington road, for passenger transportation, had been opened in the same year in which the canal commissioners were appointed, and was already proving a success. The Liverpool and Manchester was in process of construction. Two years later a short road was built for freight purposes, — the first road in this country, — from the Quincy granite quarries to tidewater. The breath was taken out of the canal project. A survey was undertaken, by direction of the Board of Internal Improvement, in the years 1827, 1828, for a railroad for both freight and passenger service from Boston to Albany. Three routes were surveyed, a northern, a middle, and a southern; the first corresponding very nearly to the northern one which had been explored for a canal, and embracing the Hoosac Tunnel as one of its features. The route adopted was essentially that of the present Boston and Albany Railroad. This line was chosen for the two reasons that it offered the most feasible point for crossing the Berkshire range of mountains, and because it passed through a more populous portion of the State than the northern route; the population of the towns through which the Boston and Albany road passes, and the towns west of Middlesex within ten miles of the line, being set down then as 137,175, while the population of the northern line was 115,892.

But as there were reformers before the Reformation, so, it would seem, there were railroad men before railroads. It has been claimed for the late Dr. Abner Phelps, of Boston, that he advocated the project of a railroad across the State of Massachusetts twenty years at least before the survey for a canal, and more than thirty years before the Boston and Albany road was built in the year 1806, Mr. Phelps, then a senior in Williams College, read an account of some of the tramways which were at that time in use in the English coal regions.