Waterways and Water Transport in Different Countries by J. Stephen Jeans
CHAPTER XXXV.
563 words | Chapter 144
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:—
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