“ The defendants admit that the citizens of Pennsylvania, in common with the citizens of the whole United States, are entitled to the use of the Ohio as a common or public highway, but claim that their bridge is not an obstruction, and is itself a connecting line of a great public highway, as important, as a means of intercommunication, as the navigation of the Ohio, and 'claim the principle of concession and compromise, which enters so largely into the structure of our government.' That this bridge will be very beneficial to the people of the neighbouring States. ”

“ That, in the opinion of many practical men, it is impossible to reduce or lower the chimneys of such boats as are engaged in the packet trade. And that the bridge at Wheeling will so obstruct their navigation at high water, for which they are specially adapted, as in a great measure to exclude them from business and diminish their value, there being seven packets, costing each from thirty to forty thousand dollars. ”

“ That the objections to the bridge are only to the insufficiency of headway for steamboats, and they aver that the headway left is amply sufficient; that the highest usual rise of the river Ohio does not exceed thirty-eight and a half feet, but will not average thirty-five feet for spring floods, nor much exceed twenty-nine feet; that the flood of 1832 was an extraordinary flood, which rose forty-four and a half feet above low water at Wheeling, on the 11th of February, 1832 ”