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]