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 Another Random Document on
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destination. Every here and there an isthmus is found to divide
waters that appear as if they were intended by Nature to be joined
together.
The same remarkable absence of facilities for promoting the
requirements of commerce is apparent on land as on water. The
surface of the earth, and the divisions of land and water, appear to
have been left by Nature in such a condition as to tax the highest
powers and capacities of man. The knowledge of roads, of bridges,
of canals, has been laboriously acquired and slowly applied. The
aboriginal inhabitants of a country usually care for none of these
things. Beasts of burden are seldom used in the most primitive
conditions of existence, and, without these, roads are not so much
of a necessity. Man, however, found out, in course of time, that it
suited his interests and his convenience to establish a system of
interchange of commodities. The simple and self-contained habits of
the trapper and the hunter gave place to a more composite order of
being. Then it was that the primeval forest, the jungle, the morass,
and the prairie became rectangulated with roadways over which
traffic could be rudely transported on the backs of mules, horses, or
other beasts of burden. As exchange and barter extended, the pack-
horse was found inefficient. He could only perform a very limited
day’s work, whether measured by quantity or by distance. For
transport over great distances he was virtually useless. In the
absence of any other system of transport, districts near the sea, or
placed on navigable rivers with easy access to the ocean, became
developed at the expense of other districts that had equal, and
perhaps greater, facilities otherwise except those of transport. A
notable case in point is that of the coal trade. For many years the
export coal trade of this country was limited to an area within 12
miles of convenient ports, because coal could not be transported
beyond that distance except at a virtually prohibitory cost.
A hundred and thirty years ago, England was in a very different
position to that which she occupies to-day. So, also, was the rest of
the world. The woollen trade was the greatest of our national
industries. The cotton industry was just beginning to take a firm root
The quantity of coal produced in Great Britain was estimated at five
or six millions of tons per annum. The quantity of iron produced was
believed to be about 100,000 tons. The only coalfield that had been
developed to any extent was that of Durham and Northumberland.
The working of coal far from the seaboard was impossible on a large
scale, because there were no means of transportation that would
allow of anything being carried more than a few miles, unless it were
of the highest value. The cotton, woollen, silk, and other textiles
were made by hand-looms, and for the most part in the private
dwellings of the workers. The modern factory system had not come
into being.
The condition of the roads, even so late as the middle of the
eighteenth century, was in a very large number of cases a matter for
just and serious complaint. Lord Hervey wrote from Kensington in
1736 that the road between that village (at that time) and London
had become so bad that “we live here in the same solitude as we
would do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean, and all the
Londoners tell us that there is between them and us an impassable
gulf of mud.” In London itself the pedestrians who made use of the
public thoroughfares had to walk on the ordinary round paving-
stones which are still employed in some towns for the centre of the
road, pavements being unknown. The streets were lit with oil-lamps
sufficiently to make darkness visible, gas not having been
introduced. The common highway was also the common sewer. The
ruts in the thoroughfares, even in the streets of London, made it
dangerous to employ vehicles, which, indeed, except in the form of
sedan-chairs, had not yet come to be largely employed.
But these dangers and troubles, manifest and inconvenient
though they were, by no means exhausted the list. In the absence
of a proper system of police, and with streets enveloped in darkness,
there was serious danger incurred in stirring abroad after nightfall.
The public thoroughfares were infested by bands of footpads and
robbers. The main streets of London were the worst off, and so
serious was the danger of going out at night that it was the rarest
thing to find any one stirring after dark. So far was this system
carried that robberies took place in broad daylight. Even such public
places as Piccadilly and Oxford Street were not exempted from the
common danger. Horace Walpole relates that he was robbed in this
way, with Lord Eglinton, Lady Albemarle, and others. Those who had
to travel to the adjacent villages of Paddington and Kensington were
afraid to proceed alone. It was therefore customary to wait until a
sufficiently numerous band had been collected to enable the
pedestrians to resist any possible attack of footpads. The Vauxhall
and Ranelagh Gardens, then the chief places of amusement in the
vicinage of the metropolis, had to employ patrols to keep the way
clear to London.
As in the metropolis, so in the provinces. The roads, both in the
towns and outside them, were in many cases as bad as bad could
be. Their not unusual condition was that of “a narrow hollow way,
little wider than a ditch, barely allowing of the passage of a vehicle
drawn by horses in a single line.” This deep, narrow road was
flanked by an elevated causeway, covered with flags or boulder
stones, along which the traffic of the locality was carried on the
backs of single horses, so that “it is difficult to imagine the delay, the
toil, and the perils by which the conduct of the traffic was attended.”
Under these circumstances, “there were towns, even in the same
county, more widely separated for all practical purposes than London
and Glasgow in the present day.”[9] Business was done slowly, and
involved so great an expenditure of time and trouble that prices
were necessarily high. News travelled more slowly still, and it was
sometimes months before the people who lived at the extremities of
the island knew what had happened in the metropolis.
The reader who desires to obtain a graphic and eloquent account
of the circumstances of England previous to the canal era could not
do better than consult Macaulay, who, in the famous third chapter of
his ‘History,’ has devoted a considerable amount of space to the
consideration of the social and economic changes that had come
over the country since 1685. The description given of the condition
of the people in that year might almost be literally applied to their
condition in the middle of the eighteenth century. The population
had increased, it is true, and commerce had been developed in the
interval. But the facilities for rapid and economical transportation
had not been materially altered for the better. The great mass of the
people were as ignorant, as superstitious, as shiftless as in the
seventeenth century. Their sanitary surroundings were as
unwholesome, their industrial pursuits as improvident, their habits as
deplorable, their hardships as irksome, their discomforts and
inconveniences as tiresome. From this remarkable record of the days
of our forefathers we quote the following passages as being specially
germane to the subject under consideration:—
“It was by the highways that both travellers and goods
generally passed from place to place; and those highways
appear to have been far worse than might have been
expected from the degree of wealth and civilisation which
the nation had even then attained. On the best lines of
communication the ruts were deep, the descents
precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly
possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the unenclosed
heath and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thoresby,
the antiquary, was in danger of losing his way on the
great North Road between Barnsley Moor and Tuxford,
and actually lost his way between Doncaster and York.
Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own coach, lost their
way between Newbury and Reading. In the course of the
same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in
danger of having to pass the night on the Plain. It was
only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road
was available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay
deep on the right and the left, and only a narrow track of
firm ground rose above the quagmire. At such times
obstructions and quarrels were frequent, and the path
was sometimes blocked up during a long time by carriers,
neither of whom would break the way. It happened,
almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a team of
 cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm to
tug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the
traveller had to encounter inconveniences still more
serious. Thoresby, who was in the habit of travelling
between Leeds and the capital, has recorded in his Diary
such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a
journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert of Sahara.
[10]

“The markets were often inaccessible during several

months. It is said that the fruits of the earth were allowed
to rot in one place, while in another place, distant only a
few miles, the supply fell far short of the demand. The
wheeled carriages were in this district generally pulled by
oxen. When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately
mansion of Petworth, in wet weather, he was six hours in
going nine miles, and it was necessary that a body of
sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach in order
to prop it. Of the carriages which contained his retinue
several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the
party has been preserved, in which the unfortunate
courtier complains that, during fourteen hours, he never
once alighted, except when his coach was overturned and
stuck fast in the mud.”
A story is told of an old stage-coach driver who, finding that his
occupation had been seriously interfered with by the modern
innovation of railways, thought he would strike a blow for the old
system by attacking the railway in a vulnerable part. “Consider,” he
argued, “what happens in case of a collision. If two stage coaches
come into collision, and there is an upset, why, there you are. But in
a railway collision, where are you?” In those days stage coaches did
not enjoy the immunity from disaster that they do in these, when
macadamised roads enable them to roll along almost as if they were
on a billiard table.[11] When the canal system was being fairly
started in England, only one stage coach ran between London and
Edinburgh, starting once a month from each city, and taking ten
days for the journey in summer, and twelve days in winter. It took
fourteen days to travel between London and Glasgow. In 1760 it
took three days to travel from Sheffield to London, and in 1774
Burke travelled from London to Bath with what was described as
“incredible speed” in twenty-four hours.
Much of the discomfort, the high range of prices, the general
existence of poverty, the limited extent of commercial operations, in
the early part of the eighteenth century was no doubt due to the
imperfect development of the modern processes of manufacture and
distribution—to the production of textiles by the old hand-loom, of
iron by the old-fashioned type of blast-furnace, of steel by the costly
cementation process, of clothing without the aid of the sewing-
machine, and of agricultural crops without any of the mechanical
aids to husbandry that are now so general and so conducive to
economical working. But the high cost of transport had also much to
answer for. Before the period of Macadam, it cost 2s. 6d. per mile to
transport coal by the old pack-horse on an ordinary road. At this
rate, it would have cost from 10l. to 15l. to transport a ton of coals
from the Midland coalfield to London, a service which is now
performed for 6s. to 7s. per ton. With only the old pack-horse
facilities it would have cost an almost incredible sum to have
performed the same service which the railways now render to the
people of the United Kingdom in the transport of minerals and
merchandise.
While the knowledge of the arts, and especially of the arts that
relate to transportation, were in so backward a state, it was
inevitable that the prices of commodities should be high, and their
interchange limited. Having to pay so much for the articles that they
did not grow or produce themselves, the people of England, in the
middle of the eighteenth century, were extremely poor, as a rule,
and had very little chance to increase their wealth. The wages of the
working classes were very low. A shilling a day was deemed to be
excellent earnings. In Scotland the wages of a day labourer were
only 5d. per day in summer and 6d. in winter. The price of bread
was ordinarily much higher than it is at the present time.[12] The
prices of clothing and of the usual requisites for domestic comfort
and convenience were very much more than at the present day. The
rates of wages were hardly enough to enable the great mass of the
people to keep body and soul together. Butchers’ meat was all but
unknown, even among those who were tolerably well off.[13] Plain
homespun was almost the only description of clothing that was
worn. Shops were hardly known in the smaller towns or villages, and
the country people were mainly supplied with such requirements as
they were able to indulge in, outside of their own productions, by
hawkers, who carried packs everywhere, as they sometimes do in
remote country places in our own day. In localities where coal was
not produced, it was not to be purchased for love or money, unless
at seaport towns, and the fuel ordinarily used was either turf or
wood.
From this condition of things England was largely rescued in the
latter part of the eighteenth century by the introduction and
development of internal waterways. This movement gave a
remarkable stimulus to commercial and industrial progress. It
enabled raw materials to be transported at about one-tenth of what
they had formerly cost, and facilitated the interchange of
commodities between the different parts of the kingdom to an
extent previously undreamt of.
It is remarkable what a large crop of important discoveries and
inventions were made about the time that canals began to be
generally used as waterways. Robinson’s project for working steam
locomotives on common roads was put forward the year after
Brindley commenced the Bridgwater Canal. In the same year the
manufacture of thread and gauze was commenced at Paisley, and
Jedediah Strutt made his first improvement on the stocking loom.
Two years later Arkwright obtained his first patent for the spinning-
frame, and Watt made his first experiments on the power of steam
with Papin’s digester. It was in 1762 that the production of
Wedgwood ware was first begun, and the same year witnessed a
notable development of the linen manufacture of Ireland, while in
1763 Hargreaves the weaver produced his spinning-jenny in his
house adjoining the print works of the first Sir Robert Peel. These
are but a few of the concurrent and collateral movements of the
period. Of the measure in which they were aided by internal
transport we shall have more to say by and by.
An examination of the geography of European countries will
disclose the fact that the United Kingdom is almost unique in regard
to its possession of a magnificent coast-line, studded with harbours
and docks, and approached by a large number of navigable rivers,
which afford easy communication with the sea. If we compare our
facilities with those of Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Italy, or
indeed any other European country, we cannot fail to be struck with
their enormous superiority. Scarcely any part of the United Kingdom
is more than a hundred miles distant from a good harbour. In many
European countries there are important towns that are very much
further, while some countries, like Switzerland, have no seaboard at
all, and others, like Austria, besides having very few ports worthy of
the name, are landlocked on more sides than one.
Again, let us look at the recent history of European politics. Do
we not find that a more extensive seaboard is the ruling passion of
such nations as Germany and Russia, whose outlets are few and
inconvenient? The half-suspected designs of Germany upon Holland,
and of Russia upon Turkish and Chinese territory, have been mainly
ascribed to this ambition. To obtain such an outlet for the Asiatic
part of her dominions, Russia is at the present moment laying down
a railway across Siberia, which will give her a closer connection with
China than the Chinese seem to care for, and is likely, in the opinion
of some shrewd politicians, to eventuate in her obtaining possession
of a large slice of the Celestial Empire. The neutralisation of certain
prominent waterways is, moreover, regarded as a matter of so much
importance, that costly and protracted wars have been undertaken
with a view to that end, nor would it be difficult to trace a
connection between the passion for more ports and the costly
armaments which have now for many years threatened the peace
and impoverished the resources of Europe.
Nevertheless, with a command of the sea that makes us at once
the envy and the despair of rival nations, and has placed our
shipping supremacy on such a pinnacle of power and prosperity as
the world has never before been acquainted with,[14] we still require
to pay more for reaching our ports, relatively to the distance
traversed, than any other nation in Europe, and very much more
than either the United States of North America, or our own
possessions of India and Canada. It is not too much to say that if we
possessed the same transportation rates as some of these countries,
our trade with the rest of the world would be much greater than it
is; while if we had the same distances to traverse as in these
countries, at the existing railway rates of our own, competition in
neutral markets with the low-rate countries of the Continent would
be impossible.
In making these statements we impute no blame and make no
reflections. We are only concerned to state the simple truth. It may
be that the railway companies in this country cannot afford to carry
goods at cheaper rates. That is their look-out. They have
undoubtedly incurred vast expense in providing the most ample and
the most admirable facilities of transport, short of the all-important
item of its cost. In no other country do we find such a splendid
service. No other country has better roads nor more capable
administration, nor quicker and more reliable dispatch, nor greater
conveniences for traffic of all kinds. Unfortunately, also, in no other
country have the railways been so costly; so that for the same
volume of traffic English railways require to have higher rates, in
order that the charges on capital may be met.[15] But why should
trade suffer, and freighters find themselves in extremis, because
British railways have made cheap rates all but impossible? There is
sure to arrive, sooner or later, a point—which in England is seldom
far distant—when railway rates become prohibitive. That point has
almost been reached when traffic can be delivered in England from
the heart of Belgium at 5s. per ton, as compared with 10s. and 12s.
per ton for railway transport between the Midlands and the
metropolis. The real question now is—Can nothing be done to
remedy this state of things, not in a spirit of hostility to the railways,
which may have done their best, but with a view to the preservation
and increased development of British trade and industry? The nation
is either hopelessly at the mercy of railway boards, or it is not. Our
trade and manufactures are either compelled to pay every year an
undue proportion of their hard earned receipts to railway
shareholders, or they are not. If they are not—if there is a way of
escape from this bondage—it is well that the nation should know
what it is, and how best to take advantage of it. This is mainly the
purpose of some of the chapters which follow.
Up to the period of the first Canal Acts, English waterways were
under the control of the State, or of authorities appointed by the
State for the conservancy of navigation; and that such an
arrangement was, on the whole, not without its advantages, is
proved by the fact already referred to, viz.: that in the middle of the
eighteenth century the advantages with regard to water carriage
enjoyed by England enabled her to outstrip other countries in the
development of her manufactures. With the construction of the first
canal began the era of private enterprise in respect of inland
navigation, which owes its existence, as it is hardly necessary to
remark here, to the genius of Brindley, and to the unflagging
determination of the Duke of Bridgwater—whose efforts in the cause
of progress were, like those of Stephenson, and the pioneers of
railway enterprise after them, at first strenuously opposed by the
public, and almost entirely neglected by the State.
The turning point of public opinion, as regards both canals and
railways, was the discovery that money might be made out of them.
Brindley’s grand project of uniting the four great ports of Liverpool,
Hull, Bristol, and London by a system of main waterways from which
subsidiary branches might be carried to the contiguous towns, had
been, to a large extent, successfully accomplished at the end of the
first quarter of the present century, and when canals began to pay
dividends, the nation began to admit their public utility. In a very
few years after Brindley’s death in 1772, an immense number of
navigation Acts received the sanction of Parliament, canals began to
be freely quoted “on ’Change,” and, in 1790, “the canal mania”
began.[16] The Gazette of August, 1792, contained notices of
eighteen new canals, and the premiums of single shares in
companies had reached such figures as 155l. (Leicester), 350l.
(Grand Trunk and Coventry), and 1170l. (Birmingham). Canals began
to be used for passenger traffic; and we read in the Times of 19th
December, 1806, of troops being despatched from London to
Liverpool by the Paddington Canal, en route for Ireland, a mode of
transport which the writer pointed out would enable them to reach
Liverpool “in only seven days!” In the four years ending 1794, some
81 canal and navigation Acts were obtained, of which 45 were
passed in the latter two years, authorising an expenditure of over
5,000,000l. No less than 1,200,000l. was spent upon the
construction of the 130 miles of waterway connecting Liverpool, by
way of Skipton, with the Aire and Calder at Leeds (a work begun in
1770, but not completed till 41 years afterwards); and when the last
canals in England were completed, in 1830, the total amount that
had been expended upon our waterways was about 14,000,000l.
Out of some 210 rivers in England and Wales, 44 in England have
hitherto been made navigable.[17] The Thames, the Severn, and the
Mersey are connected by 648 miles of river and canal, the Thames
and Humber by 537 miles, the Severn and Mersey by 832 miles, and
the Mersey and Humber by 680 miles; the Fen waters have an
extent of 431 miles, and the remaining canals of England and Wales
amount to 1204 miles.[18] This fine system of waterways, with a
total length of 4332 miles, furnishes no less than 21 through routes
for traffic between London and the manufacturing districts, but, as it
is scarcely necessary to observe, a very large portion of it has
ceased to be of any practical value, while the utility of that which is
still available to the public is constantly diminishing, through the
neglect due to the impoverished condition of many of the canal
companies and other causes.
 In the eyes of engineers, the defects of natural geography were
made to be corrected by their skill, experience, and ingenuity.
Peninsulas and isthmuses, whether large or small, appear to be
designed only for the purpose of being pierced with artificial
waterways. Hydraulic engineers are the high priests of science,
whose mission it is to publish the banns of marriage between seas
and oceans, and complete the nuptials in a way that no man may
put asunder. By their sacerdotal functions, the Mediterranean has
been married to the Red Sea, the Caspian to the Black Sea, the
North Sea to the Atlantic, the Adriatic to the Archipelago, and the
Atlantic almost to the Pacific, while we have seen many unions of
less distinguished members of the great maritime family. The
importance of these alliances to the trade, the wealth, the
intercourse, the facility of intercommunication, and the general
convenience of the world, not to speak of strategical and political
considerations, affecting individual nations, can hardly be over-
estimated. But much still remains to be done. The high contracting
parties are in some cases coy and bashful, requiring more effective
wooing before they can be won. The prospective matchmakers must
not forget that

“It’s not so much the lover who woos

As the gallant’s way of wooing.”

There is a personal history belonging to the development of canal

navigation of a much more engrossing interest than can usually be
claimed for so unromantic a type of institutions. The annals of that
history extend over many centuries. They reach back even to the
times of ancient Egypt, the cradle of the sciences, and were
contemporaneous with the building of the Pyramids. Menes, who
lived 2320 years before the Christian era, constructed water-courses,
which were simply canals, for carrying off the superfluous waters
that reduced the greater part of Egypt in his time to the condition of
an extensive marsh.[19] Sesostris, 1659 b.c., undertook the cutting
and embanking of canals on a more extensive scale, carrying them
at right angles with the Nile, as far as from Memphis to the sea, for
the quick conveyance of corn and merchandise.[20] Ptolemy II.
(Philadelphus) completed a canal, which had been commenced and
continued by several previous sovereigns, and which is said[21] to
have afforded a connection with the sea;[22] while even at this early
date, gates or sluices were constructed, which opened to afford a
passage through the Egyptian canal to the sea.[23]
In Roman times, again, Julius Cæsar, Caligula, and Nero were
canal-makers, having each in his day attempted to unite the Ionian
Sea with the Archipelago, through the isthmus of Corinth—an
undertaking which is only in our own day being consummated. The
emperor Trajan was also greatly interested in canals, as his
correspondence with Pliny proves, while all the principal Roman
consuls and generals appear to have possessed some knowledge of
hydraulics, and applied that knowledge to useful purpose.
Charlemagne attempted to unite the Rhine with the Danube, and
to establish water communication between the German Ocean and
the Black Sea. Leonardo da Vinci was equally great as a canal-maker
and a painter, having constructed some of the earliest canals in Italy.
The Doges of Venice, “the City in the Sea,” naturally paid much
attention to the same subject, which was, indeed, essential to their
convenience, security, and prosperity.
It is to the credit of many of the sovereigns of France that they
have sought to promote the security and welfare of their country by
similar means. Henry II. employed Adam de Crapone, about 1555, to
cut the Canal of Charolais; and Henry IV. continued the work. Louis
XIV. engaged an Italian to construct one of the greatest of the
French canals—that of Languedoc, which is elsewhere referred to. In
more recent times Napoleon Buonaparte and Napoleon III. have
interested themselves actively on behalf of canal navigation; and it
appears to have been by a mere chance that the latter did not
become a canal administrator in Central America, where he took a
keen interest in the proposed ship canal across the isthmus of
Nicaragua.
If we cast our eyes over the rest of the European Continent we
shall find that wherever artificial waterways have been provided,
Royal or Imperial encouragement has assisted in the operation.
Peter the Great and Catherine attached the utmost importance to
the development of Russia by this means. In Sweden, Gustavus Vasa
and his successors were equally solicitous, in a country full of natural
waterways, that these should be utilised and connected by artificial
means.
A system that has been instrumental in giving to Europe such
towns as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Venice, which has facilitated
the progress of commerce in a hundred different directions, which
was practically the only means of transport for nearly a century in all
the chief countries of the world, and which still makes provision for
the interchange of commodities at a cheaper rate than any other;
which has involved the expenditure of hundreds of millions, and has
found employment for vast numbers of well-remunerated employés;
which abridges distance and time, and brings into closer contact
different districts and countries, seas and oceans; which has
engaged the attention of the greatest potentates and princes of
recorded history, and has in all times been deemed a fit subject for
the exercise of kingcraft; which, in our more prosaic age, brings us
cheap food, cheap coal, and cheap commodities generally—such a
system is one that can hardly be lightly esteemed, even now,
notwithstanding that its waning light has been eclipsed by the
brilliance of that other system which has been so marked a
development of our nineteenth century civilisation.
Canal engineering, besides, has a very remarkable record, and
has achieved many notable triumphs. These have hardly received
the attention to which their importance entitles them. It is true that
no canal has been carried, like the Callao, Lima, and Oroya railroad,
in Peru, to the height of nearly sixteen thousand feet above the level
of the sea.[24] It has, however, on the Languedoc and other canals
been found easily feasible to carry a canal to a height of 600 to 1000
ft. above the sea. Canal engineers have not, perhaps, pierced the
Alps with a tunnel ten miles in length, as on the Saint-Gothard
Railway; but they have carried a tide-water canal from the
Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and they have essayed to perform
the same feat through the Cordillera. Hydraulic engineering has,
next to railway engineering, been the most remarkable manifestation
of the applied science of modern times, and in canal construction it
has attained some of its most successful results.
Sufficient credit, moreover, has hardly been given to the canal
system for the important part which it has taken in opening up the
resources of different countries, and thereby bringing about the
remarkable development of commerce and industry which has been
so marked a feature of our own times. The Act for the construction
of the Bridgwater Canal was obtained in 1759, previous to which
time the internal commerce of the country, as we have seen, was
carried on by pack-horses or waggons, on common turnpike-roads.
Mr. Wood has calculated[25] that the average cost of conveying
heavy goods on macadamised turnpike-roads by this system was 8d.
per mile, while light goods cost 1s. per ton per mile. As that
calculation applies to a time when wages, fodder, and other items
involved in the expense of such transport, were lower than now, it is
a fair assumption that it will be at least as much to-day, and for
facility of reckoning we may take the average at the convenient and
fairly likely figure of 10d. per ton per mile over all. Now, the total
quantity of merchandise carried on the railways of the United
Kingdom in 1887 was about 269 millions of tons. No evidence exists
as to the total mileage over which this vast tonnage was carried, or,
as it is expressed in railway phraseology, of the ton-mile traffic. But
if we assume that the average charge for traffic carried by railway in
1887 was 1d. per ton per mile, the total movement would be
represented by the enormous figure of 8962 millions of ton-miles. To
have carried the same traffic under the system of transport that
preceded the canals would have been impossible, but it would have
cost the country, if it had been practicable, no less a sum than 373½
millions sterling, which is about one-third of the estimated amount
of our national income from all sources. But this, after all, is not the
most curious part of the calculation. In order to understand how
impossible our present transport system would have been under the
old régime, we must assume that a horse is capable, under ordinary
circumstances, of carrying one ton about ten miles a day. Working
for 300 days a year, therefore, he would be able to carry a total
weight of about 3000 tons one mile in the course of twelve months.
To undertake the same work as that performed by our railways
would therefore require close on three million horses, or, practically,
the whole of the horses that exist in the United Kingdom at the
present time, for every purpose, including agriculture.
It was while we were depending exclusively upon this expensive
and tedious system of conveyance, when the internal development
of the country was rendered all but impossible by the heavy expense
of bringing produce to the sea, and when our export trade was
consequently of the most restricted dimensions, that canals came to
the rescue. They worked a marvellous change in the trade of the
country—a change which can, perhaps, be best illustrated by the
ordinarily dry, but in this case almost thrilling, returns of our exports
and imports. Burke, in one of his greatest speeches,[26] spoke of a
total exportation of the value of 14½ millions, and a total
importation of 9½ millions sterling, as an index of extraordinary
prosperity. In another equally great oration[27] he said, speaking of
the fact that we were then exporting rather over six millions a year
to our colonies, that “when we speak of the commerce with our
colonies, fiction lags after truth; invention is unfruitful, and
imagination cold and barren.” What would he have said had he lived
to see, as we have done, our exports reach the vast total of 250
millions a year, with nearly 90 millions of exports to our colonies?
Canals certainly did not complete this revolution, but they had a very
important share in giving it a start. Between the time when the canal
system was commenced, about 1760, and the end of the first canal
period, which may be put at 1838, the export trade of the country
advanced from 14 millions to about 50 millions per annum. This is
poor progress, compared with what has since been attained, through
the development of the steamship, the railway, the telegraph, and
other modern adjuncts of commerce, but it was deemed as
remarkable for that day as we consider our subsequent progress to
be in ours.
It is practically impossible to arrive at a correct estimation of the
tonnage of goods of different kinds that goes to make up the inland
and the external trade of this country. We know that the railways of
the United Kingdom annually carry about 280 millions of tons of
minerals and merchandise (according to the Board of Trade returns),
but a considerable part of this tonnage is duplicated, in consequence
of passing over more than one railway. Of the total tonnage carried
by railway, the greater part probably goes no farther. It is consumed
on the spot, like the coal traffic of London and the minerals supplied
to our great ironmaking centres. But a very much larger quantity is
carried from inland centres to seaports, and thence shipped for
places of consumption at home and abroad. The coastwise carrying
trade of the United Kingdom is now represented by 60 million tons a
year. The foreign shipping trade amounts to over 70 million tons a
year. Only a comparatively small proportion of these quantities is
consumed at the ports of shipment. The greater part is carried
farther by railway, thus breaking bulk twice—once in moving it from
the ship to the railway wagon, and again in removing it from the
railway wagon. Much of it has to be carried from the ship in barges,
and thence transferred to the railway. All this means loss of time,
loss of money, and deterioration of quality, which adequate water
facilities should do much to obviate.
There is no class of property that has undergone a more
remarkable range of vicissitudes than canal ownership. In the early
years of the present century, the value of canal companies’ shares
was much higher than that of any railway property has been since
that time. The price of some canal shares rose to a hundred times
their nominal or par value. Enormous dividends were often paid. In
other cases, where the navigation had been neglected, the
properties were very lightly esteemed, and yielded unsatisfactory
results. The Fossdyke Navigation in Lincolnshire was leased about
1840, by the Corporation of Lincoln, to a Mr. Elison for nine hundred
and ninety-nine years, at 75l. a year! Six years later the executors of
the lessee leased it to the Great Northern Railway Company for
9575l.[28] The Loughborough Canal shares, which were once worth
4500l., are now scarcely worth 100l.; and a still more notable decline
is that of the Erewash Canal, whose shares, now quoted at about
50l., were once worth fully 3000l.
There are three great epochs in the modern history of canal
navigation, each marked by characteristics peculiar to itself, and
sufficiently unlike those of either of the others to enable it to be
readily differentiated. They may be thus described:—
1. The era of waterways, designed at once to facilitate the
transport of heavy traffic from inland centres to the seaboard, and to
supersede the then existing systems of locomotion—the wagon and
the pack-horse. This era commenced with the construction of the
Bridgwater Canal between 1766 and 1770, and terminated with the
installation of the railway system in 1830.
2. The era of interoceanic canals, which was inaugurated by the
completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, and is still in progress.
3. The era of ship-canals intended to afford to cities and towns
remote from the sea, all the advantages of a seaboard, and
especially that of removing and despatching merchandise without
the necessity of breaking bulk.
The second great stage in the development of canal transport is
of comparatively recent origin. It may, in fact, be said to date only
from the time when the construction of a canal across the Isthmus
of Suez was proved to be not only practicable as an engineering
project, but likewise highly successful as a commercial enterprise.
Not that this was by any means the first canal of its kind. On the
contrary, as we have shown elsewhere, the ancients had many
schemes of a similar kind in view across the same isthmus. The
canal of Languedoc, constructed in the reign of Louis XIV., was for
that day as considerable an undertaking. It was designed for the
purpose of affording a safe and speedy means of communication
between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean; it has a total
length of 148 miles, is in its highest part 600 ft. above the level of
the sea, and has in all 114 locks and sluices. In Russia, canals had
been constructed in the time of Peter the Great, for the purpose of
affording a means of communication between the different inland
seas that are characteristic of that country. The junction of the North
and Caspian Seas, of the Baltic and the Caspian, and the union of
the Black and the Caspian Seas, had all been assisted by the
construction of a series of canals which were perhaps without
parallel for their completeness a century ago. In Prussia a vast
system of inland navigation had been completed during the last
century, whereby Hamburg was connected with Dantzic, and the
products of the country could be exported either by the Black Sea or
by the Baltic. In Scotland the Forth and Clyde Canal, and the
Caledonian Canal, were notable examples of artificial navigation
designed to connect two seas, or two firths that had all the
characteristics of independent oceans; and the Erie Canal, in the
United States, completed a chain of communication between inland
seas of much the same order.
But, although a great deal had been done in the direction of
facilitating navigation between different waters by getting rid of the
“hyphen” by which they were separated anterior to the date of the
Suez Canal, this grand enterprise undoubtedly marked a notable
advance in the progress of the world from this point of view. The
work was at once more original and more gigantic than any that had
preceded it—so much so that in this country, as we have elsewhere
shown, it was generally discredited. Probably no other canal
previously constructed had cost anything like the same large sum
that was set aside for that of Suez. The canal of Languedoc,
constructed in the seventeenth century, is stated to have cost
fourteen millions of livres. The Erie Canal had cost five million seven
hundred thousand dollars (1,140,000l.). The Caledonian Canal cost
1,035,460l. The Amsterdam Canal cost about the same amount. The
Suez Canal, however, was estimated to cost 8,000,000l. to
10,000,000l., or nearly ten times as much as the largest canals
constructed up to that time. Nowadays this would not be regarded
as a large sum for such a purpose. We have got accustomed to big
figures. A hundred millions sterling is not an uncommon capital for a
railway company. The Manchester Canal, only some thirty miles long,
is estimated to cost about eight millions sterling, and more than sixty
millions have been sunk at Panama. But so little faith was felt in the
success of the Suez Canal, with such a large expenditure, that it was
seriously maintained in the “Edinburgh Review” that, “were it to
become the great highway of nations between the West and the
East—even the Gates of the East, as it has been the fashion to call it
—and were all the local advantages predicted for Egypt to be derived
from it, still, on account of the enormous expense of construction
and maintenance, it would not pay.”
While these views were entertained about a waterway that
promised to become the general and almost exclusive means of
communication between the West and the East, between Great
Britain and her Australasian and Indian possessions, it is not much a
matter for surprise that other projects of a similar character
remained in abeyance. But the Suez Canal once completed and
successful, other ship canal schemes came “thick as autumnal leaves
in Vallombrosa.” Several of these were eminently practical, as well as
practicable. The Hellenic Parliament determined on cutting through
the tongue of land which is situated between the Gulfs of Athens
and Lepantus, known as the Isthmus of Corinth. This isthmus divides
the Adriatic and the Archipelago, and compels all vessels passing
from the one sea to the other to round Cape Matapan, thus
materially lengthening the voyages of vessels bound from the
western parts of Europe to the Levant, Asia Minor and Smyrna. The
canal is now an accomplished fact. Another proposal was that of
cutting a canal from Bordeaux to Marseilles, across the South of
France, a distance of some 120 miles, whereby these two great
ports would be brought 1678 miles nearer to each other, and a
further reduction, estimated at 800 miles, effected in the distance
between England and India. The Panama Canal (projected in 1871,
and actually commenced in 1880) is, however, the greatest
enterprise of all, and in many respects the most gigantic and difficult
undertaking of which there is any record. The proposed national
canal from sea to sea, proposed by Mr. Samuel Lloyd and others for
Great Britain, the proposed Sheffield Ship Canal, the proposed Irish
Sea and Birkenhead Ship Canal, and the proposed ship canal to
connect the Forth and the Clyde, are but a few of many notable
examples of the restlessness of our times in this direction. All these
canals are intended to economise time and space, which has
become the greatest desideratum of our age. By fulfilling this
mission they facilitate commerce, cheapen the cost of commodities,
bring nations into closer touch, and materially lengthen the sum of
work and knowledge that can be crowded into the average span of
human life.
We are now in the very throes of the revolution that appears to
be destined, before it closes, to secure for most of the great inland
centres of population a large share of the advantages that result
from being on the seaboard. The location of many of our large
towns is difficult to understand. Their prosperity, in spite of their
location, is still more unintelligible, on the first blush. Very few of our
great cities are on the seaboard. London is over 60 miles from the
Nore. Paris is 227½ miles from the sea at Havre, and Berlin, Vienna,
and Madrid are each over or nearly 200 miles. In England we have
such towns as Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, and Birmingham, situated
at long distances from shipping facilities, and flourishing in spite of
that disadvantage. But the fact has been recognised as a
disadvantage, none the less. Manchester, less unfavourably situated
than some of the towns we have named, has resolved to “burst its
birth’s invidious bar” by the construction of the ship canal that is
now being proceeded with. Sheffield has initiated a project with the
same end in view. The people of Birmingham and the Midlands
generally appear to have made up their minds to have direct
communication with the Bristol Channel. In regard to all of these
towns canal facilities of an inferior kind already exist. These,
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