You said, “I’m not...”
I’m sorry I was not more clear.
Since 1825, the Erie Canal has provided a waterway between Buffalo and Albany. That canal lowered the cost of shipping freight from the old Midwest to Eastern and foreign markets. The trade that resulted made New York City a more important seaport than Philadelphia and Baltimore.
As time passed, the old Erie Canal was improved. Some new sections were built to replace narrow, shallow sections. So, in some locations, the “current” canal runs parallel to one or two abandoned older sections.
NOW, what I tried unsuccessfully to suggest is that in our modern age:
1. where a treaty is NOT a “Treaty”, and
2. where a “fine” is really a “tax”, and
3. where “...established by a State...” legally means “...established by a State OR BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT...”
it should be relatively easy to find someone in authority to say:
“The Constitution of New York State requires New York State to maintain the Erie Canal, without defining precisely what “The Eire Canal IS! Therefore we need only declare that “The New York Thruway”, which supports travel primarily by car and by truck, is hereafter, for all legal purposes, “The Erie Canal”. This new definition will allow us to transfer maintenance funds from the “old” canal to the Thruway, without violating the Constitution.”
Are we clever or what?
Brilliant!
Your description of the new and old canals may have cleared something up for me. My mother is from Oneida and frequently mentions the “barge canal” and that it is not the same as the Erie Canal. Maybe the barge canal is part of the old one then.
I was born in Ithaca and left NYS when I was 6, in 1979. Every time I return it is deader and more desperately decrepit than the year before. It breaks my heart. I don’t think it’s merely native jingoism to say that New York has a truly glorious past, and has given a greater share of the improvements of modern life than many places, whether states or countries! Which makes it all the more tragic. But I guess it has given more of its share of progressives as well, so there’s the rub. Still, I keep a secret fantasy of its rebirth, if only...to live there in freedom and prosperity, it must have been a magical place in my grandparents’ days.