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THE CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO CANAL
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the advent of the canal-boat? This was the question which was being agitated throughout the years of the Potomac chimera; the failure of that scheme again restored the confidence of the Baltimoreans. But the revival of the plan under the new arrangement of a canal from tide-water to the Ohio Basin again created alarm. The position of the Marylanders in this extremity is well indicated by one of Niles's editorials as follows: "The 'National Intelligencer' of Tuesday last [November, 1823], in an article signed 'Multum in Parvo,' contains a very illiberal attack on the people of Baltimore, because of their supposed opposition to the Potomac canal. It accuses us of 'avarice and ambition'—of being 'selfish'—as 'jealous' of Washington, and as preparing to oppose a restoration of their 'political rights' to the people of the District of Columbia! It also puts it down as impossible to conduct an arm of this canal to our city. . . Baltimore 'avaricious and ambitious!' We refer to the support afforded by loans, and the great disbursements made on our own responsibility, during the late war; the splen-