Canals do, indeed, belong to the past. In this respect they are entitled to be regarded with interest, and even with veneration. The Cnidians, according to Herodotus, the Bœtians, according to Strabo, the Babylonians, according to Ptolemy, and the Romans, according to Pliny, were all skilled in the art of canal-making, and employed their skill to good purpose. From those times until these the waterways of art have supplemented those of nature as handmaidens of trade and commerce, as fertilisers of the soil, and as military and strategical highways. That canals also belong to the present, Egypt, the American isthmus, Manchester, Corinth, and other places, fully prove; and, unless we greatly err, they are no less the heritage of the future.
FOOTNOTES
CHAPTER I
[9] Smiles’s ‘Lives of the Engineers,’ vol. i. p. 180.
[10] Judging from the diary of Mr. Justice Rokeby, which has been recently printed by Sir Henry Peek, in the time of William and Mary going circuit was arduous work, and the arrangements for reaching the scene of his labours occupied almost as much of a Judge’s attention as the execution of the Royal commission when he arrived. Mr. Justice Rokeby, according to this record (as abridged in the Times), usually travelled in a four-horse coach with his chamber clerk, while his groom or valet attended him on a saddle-horse, which also carried the Judge’s “portmantle.” Generally both coach and horses were hired for the occasion, the rate appearing to be about 22s. for each travelling day, and 12s. for each resting day. Sometimes the learned Judge economised by “putting a pair of his own horses to the wheel,” and had his own coachman to drive. But more than once it was necessary to take six horses in the coach, and occasionally a couple of servants on saddle-horses were in attendance. In the spring of 1692-93, “after the circuits were all settled and the term ended—viz. February 25—there fell a very great snow, which occasioned the King to issue out a proclamation, March 2, 1692-3, to alter all the circuits to later days but only the Norfolk and Oxford circuits, which continued upon their first appointment.” Mr. Justice Rokeby, being unlucky enough to be going on the Norfolk circuit, derived no benefit from the postponement, but “by reason of the badness of the ways was forced to take six horses,” so that he was “out of purse” on the circuit above 52l. The previous summer the waters were out, and travelling in the valley of the Thames was no easy matter. “I began my journey into this circuit (the Oxford) from London,” says the Judge, “on Monday, June 27, and baited at Maidenhead, but the waters were so great upon the road that at Colebrook they came just into the body of the coach, and we were forced to boat twice at Maidenhead, and we boated the coach, and at the second time we boated ourselves, but the coach came through the water, and it came very deep into the body of it, and that night we lay at Henley-upon-Thames, where we were forced to boat the coach again.” For years afterwards we read that the way from Oxford to Gloucester was so bad that it took 14 hours to accomplish the distance, though it was not more than 33 miles, while there was a “very bad and shaking way” from Monmouth to Hereford; and at an earlier stage of the circuit the Judge chronicles his safe arrival at High Wycombe from London with the pious but significant ejaculation, “Thanks be to God!” Sometimes the Judges, apparently, hired a coach between them, but Mr. Justice Rokeby had a little difference with his brother Judge, Mr. Justice Eyre, on his second circuit, concerning the division of expenses, and this probably led to his making independent carriage arrangements subsequently. On this occasion Mr. Justice Rokeby was called back to town at an early point of the circuit, and Mr. Justice Eyre declined to take on the coach, but finished the circuit on horseback, and it was his demand to be paid a share of the expenses of his saddle-horse which led to the difference of opinion.
[11] The difference between macadamised and ordinary roads, in the cost of conveyance, not to speak of comfort, is extraordinary. Nicholas Wood estimated that the transport of coal by the old pack horse was reduced from about 2s. 6d. to 8d. per ton on a good road of this description.
[12] According to the tables in Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’ (Book i. chap. xi.) the average price of wheat between 1637 and 1700 was 2l. 11s. 0⅓d. per quarter; from 1700 till 1764 it was 2l. 0s. 69⁄32d. per quarter.
[13] Even so late as 1794, Hepburn, in his ‘General view of the Agriculture and Economy of East Lothian,’ stated that, not long before, not a single bullock was slaughtered in the butcher market at Haddington except at a special time.
[14] The writer has shown, in articles published in the Times on January 5th, 1887, and again on January 2nd, 1888, what are the extent and the distinguishing features of this supremacy.
[15] The average cost per mile of the railways in England and Wales is about 50,000l., as against 12,700l. in the United States, 21,000l. in Germany, 25,300l. in Belgium, 27,500l. in France, and 20,000l. in Holland.
[16] See a paper read before the British Association at Birmingham, 1887.