tions retain such rights and privileges as are claimed to have been granted by the Legislature, and the State is deprived of compensation.

Even if the convention was disinclined to revoke licenses heretofore granted to corporations, it should at least have adopted an amendment providing for compensation to the State and limiting in some way the amount of water to be taken, and the purposes for which it might be used.

It might naturally have been assumed in 1885 when the State, by right of eminent domain, took possession of the shore and islands adjacent to the cataract, that thenceforth the Falls would be safe from injury, and that under protection of a State Board they would remain unmolested in undiminished grandeur.

This very natural presumption became practically an assurance in 1888, when the province of Ontario, following the example of the State of New York, expropriated the Canadian shore for two miles and a half toward Chippewa and northwardly toward Queenston and opened the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park.

With both sides of the river under government protection, the Falls seemed permanently exempted from the attacks of corporations and certain to remain as Nature made them, for the wonder, instruction and delectation of mankind.

But the sequestration of the shores and islands of the river did not put an end to ingenious devices to utilize the water power of the river. The Legislature was more than once urged to pass bills that, if enacted, might have been followed by great injury to the Reservation and the Falls. The strenuous opposition of the Commissioners and the people alone prevented the enactment

of these bills. And the Legislature, as stated, has granted to several corporations, without compensation, right and licenses which, if valid, are of enormous value. One might think, from reading the daily and periodical press, that the Niagara river's principal use and function would henceforth be to turn immense turbine wheels in gigantic penstocks in order that power may be developed to be sold by a great corporation; that the rapids and the Falls would hereafter be inferior in importance to the costly plant and structures of the same powerful corporation.

The Commissioners have been informed that the Ontario authorities receive a substantial annual rental or remuneration for rights and privileges on the Canadian side of the river and within the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park, similar to those granted by the New York Legislature for no pecuniary compensation what

ever.

A copy of the report of the special committee of the Constitutional Convention on the diversion of the Niagara river is appended to this report.

From Twelfth Annual Report, January 28, 1896.

It would seem to be the duty of the Commissioners to take, if possible, a more determined attitude than ever in opposition to all measures of this sort. With reference to diversions of the water of the river, they maintain that, as the boundary of the Reservation extends to the line that divides the United States from the Dominion of Canada, it is their duty to protest against the drawing off of the water into canals and tunnels, as directly tending to work injury to the property of the State and its sublimest spectacle.

The method by which it is possible to inflict the greatest injury upon the Reservation and to diminish the value of the State's property at Niagara has been referred to in previous reports; and that is, to grant to private corporations the right to divert the waters of the Niagara river above the Falls, by drawing off sufficient quantities of which, it will not be very long before the volume going over the American Fall will be noticeably dimiuished. If the Falls cease to be attractive by reason of the diminution of the volume of water; if instead of being the most stupendous of all the world's cataracts, they become reduced and disappointing, it can readily be seen that the usefulness and attractiveness of the Reservation will become seriously impaired.

It need hardly be repeated that the American Fall will suf fer much more from diversions of the American side than the Horseshoe or Canadian Fall.

Eight corporations claim to have already secured the right to divert the waters of the upper Niagara, and without contributing a dollar by way of compensation.

That these grants are indefensible and antagonistic to the public interest, would seem to require no demonstration, and it is not unreasonable to question the existence of the moral or legal right to grant to private corporations, without compensation, what belongs to the people. But what has already been done at the urgency of private speculators may be repeated, the more especially as the efforts made to secure in the New Constitution a clause prohibiting such action, were unsuccessful.

The Commissioners of the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park have granted to one corporation, at least, the right to divert the