The alternative to letting the country bear the burden would be to leave the resuscitated canal system to pay for itself. But is there any reasonable probability that it could? The essence of the present day movement is that the traders who would be enabled to use the canals under the improved conditions should have cheaper transport; but if the twenty, fifty, or any other number of millions sterling spent on the purchase and improvement of the canals, and on the provision of indispensable accessories thereto, are to be covered out of the tolls and charges imposed on those using the canals, there is every probability that (if the canals are to pay for themselves) the tolls and charges would have to be raised to such a figure that any existing difference between them and the present railway rates would disappear altogether. That difference is already very often slight enough, and it may be even less than appears to be the case, because the railway rate might include various services, apart from mere haulage—collection, delivery, warehousing, use of coal depôt, etc.—which are not covered by the canal tolls and charges, and the cost of which would have to be added thereto. A very small addition, therefore, to the canal tolls, in order to meet interest on heavy capital expenditure on purchase and reconstruction, would bring waterways and railways so far on a level in regard to rates that the railways, with the superior advantages they offer in many ways, would, inevitably, still get the preference.
The revival movement, however, is based on the supposition that no increase in the canal tolls now charged would be necessary.[14] Canal transport, it is said, is already much higher in this country than it is on the Continent—and that may well be so, considering (1) that canals such as ours, with their numerous locks, etc., cost more to construct, operate and maintain than canals on the flat lands of Continental Europe; (2) that British canals are still supposed to maintain themselves; and (3) that canal traffic as well as railway traffic is assessed in the most merciless way for the purposes of local taxation. In the circumstances it is assumed that the canal traffic in England could not pay higher tolls and charges than those already imposed, and that the interest on the aforesaid millions, spent on purchase and improvements, would all be met out of the expanded traffic which the restored canals would attract.
Again I may ask—Is there any reasonable probability of this? Bearing in mind the complete transition in trade of which I have already spoken—a transition which, on the one hand, has enormously increased the number of individual traders, and, on the other, has brought about a steady and continuous decrease in the weight of individual consignments—is there the slightest probability that the conditions of trade are going to be changed, and that merchants, manufacturers, and other traders will forego the express delivery of convenient quantities by rail, in order to effect a problematical saving (and especially problematical where extra cartage has to be done) on the tedious delivery of wholesale quantities by canal?
Nothing short of a very large increase indeed in the water-borne traffic would enable the canals to meet the heavy expenditure foreshadowed, and, even if such increase were secured, the greater part of it would not be new traffic, but simply traffic diverted from the railways. More probably, however, the very large increase would not be secured, and no great diversion from the railways would take place. The paramount and ever-increasing importance attached by the vast majority of British traders to quick delivery (an importance so great that on some lines there are express goods trains capable of running from 40 to 60 miles an hour) will keep them to the greater efficiency of the railway as a carrier of goods; while, if a serious diversion of traffic were really threatened, the British railways would not be handicapped as those of France and Germany are in any resort to rates and charges which would allow of a fair competition with the waterways.
In practice, therefore, the theory that the canals would become self-supporting, as soon as the aforesaid millions had been spent, must inevitably break down, with the result that the burden of the whole enterprise would then necessarily fall upon the community; and why the trader who consigns his goods by rail, or the professional man who has no goods to consign at all, should be taxed to allow of cheaper transport being conferred on the minority of persons or firms likely to use the canals even when resuscitated, is more than I can imagine, or than they, probably, will be able to realise.
The whole position was very well described in some remarks made by Mr Harold Cox, M.P., in the course of a discussion at the Society of Arts in February 1906, on a paper read by Mr R. B. Buckley, on "The Navigable Waterways of India."
"There was," he said, "a sort of feeling current at the present time in favour of spending large amounts of the taxpayer's money in order to provide waterways which the public did not want, or at any rate which the public did not want sufficiently to pay for them, which after all was the test. He noticed that everybody who advocated the construction of canals always wanted them constructed with the taxpayer's money, and always wanted them to be worked without a toll. Why should not the same principle be applied to railways also? A railway was even more useful to the public than a canal; therefore, construct it with the taxpayer's money, and allow everybody to use it free. It was always possible to get plenty of money subscribed with which to build a railway, but nobody would subscribe a penny towards the building of canals. An appeal was always made to the government. People had pointed to France and Germany, which spent large sums of money on their canals. In France that was done because the French Parliamentary system was such that it was to the interest of the electorate and the elected to spend the public money on local improvements or non-improvements.... He had been asked, Why make any roads? The difference between roads and canals was that on a canal a toll could be levied on the people who used it, but on a road that was absolutely impossible. Tolls on roads were found so inconvenient that they had to be given up. There was no practical inconvenience in collecting tolls on canals; and, therefore, the principle that was applied to everything else should apply to canals—namely, that those who wanted them should pay for them."