Constitutional Whig

On Wednesday last at 11 o'clock, a signal gun announced the entrance of the first vessel into the Erie Canal, which has been recently finished. The glad intelligence was conveyed by a discharge of cannon stationed at proper distances, from Buffalo to Albany & New-York, where it was greeted by a salute of 100 guns from Fort Lafayette. The event has been hailed with every demonstration of national joy and enthusiasm, and the arrival of the boat at New-York is to be celebrated by processions, balls, and every manifestation of public rejoicing. New-York has cause to rejoice—it is the proudest day in her annals. The period is not far distant, when after having enabled the State to liquidate the debt contracted to complete it, the revenues from this Canal will constitute an immense fund, to be devoted to the encouragement of literature and science, to the improvements of the arts, to the education of the poor, and to the development of all her resources, moral and physical. It is, indeed, an epoch which a grateful posterity will commemorate when the names of Heroes and Statesmen, now figuring on the theatre of life, will be buried perhaps forever, in oblivion.