[308] Ibid., 2, 1281-1283.
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
THE STATE ACQUISITION AND CONTROL OF WATERWAYS.
“The march of the human mind is slow. It was not, until after two hundred years, discovered that, by an eternal law, providence had decreed vexation to violence and poverty to rapine, Your ancestors did, however, at length open their eyes to the ill husbandry of injustice. They found that of all tyrannies, the tyranny of a free people could the least be endured; and that laws made against a whole nation were not the most effectual methods for securing its obedience.” —Edmund Burke.
England is the only nation in the world that has not either reserved to itself State control over the means of communication, or provided railways and waterways at the public cost. The United States Government have no proprietary interest in the railways of that country, but individual State Governments have such interests in canals. In France the canals are largely owned, and almost wholly controlled, by the State. In Germany, the State owns the greater part of the railways and a great part of the canals, while it is extending the latter system largely at the public cost. In Italy and Russia, the same remark applies to the existing state of affairs. In the British Colonies, and especially in India and Canada, both the railways and the waterways have been and are being provided at the public expense, and are administered by officials responsible to the people generally. England, on the contrary, has allowed both railways and waterways to be monopolised by private enterprise, with results disastrous to the latter, as we have already seen, and with consequences, as regards the former, that threaten to be almost as serious to the public, who are held fast in the iron grip of a monopoly which they are powerless to control.
Seeing that the proposal that the State should purchase the railways of the United Kingdom, and carry them on as they are carried on in Germany and Belgium, with a view to public interests, has not hitherto appeared to find much favour in political circles, and has been discouraged by several important Royal Commissions and other authorities, it is perhaps worth while to consider whether the time has not arrived when the State should make some attempt to undo part of the mischief that it has done to the trade and traders of the country in neglecting the acquisition of the railways, by aiding the movement for the reconstruction of our waterways. The present moment is highly opportune for such a step. The canals could, no doubt, be purchased cheaply, and they could be enlarged and improved at comparatively little cost.
In some very pertinent remarks on the subject of the control of Waterways by the State, Mr. M. B. Cotsworth has observed[309] that, “considering the immense influence which the cost of transport has upon the trade and progress of a nation, it is but natural that this remedy should first suggest itself, especially when the advantageous results of Government management are so strikingly shown in the working of the Post Office and telegraphs, as also in the example of Government control of canals in France. All who look solely to the interests of the community must admit that this course offers the highest national advantages, and will ultimately prove the best solution.
“Amongst the chief advantages of Government control are the following:—
1. The whole system of ‘inland navigation’ would be developed and worked for the benefit of the nation by a complete scheme, and thus secure for the first time a genuine and permanent competition with railway charges, and so hold them in check.