In other words, the scheme is but a further development of that policy which aims at enforcing the principle of competition irrespective of cost, and without regard for the capital expenditure on which a fair return ought to be assured. One of the witnesses examined before the Royal Commission on Canals and Waterways said there was a local feeling against the Wilts and Berks Canal being taken in hand by the county council "because," he said, "we are all afraid of the rates; but," he added, "from what I have heard from traders and others, they would like to see it back again, mainly as a means of cutting down railway rates." Mr Remnant, one of the Commissioners, says in his separate report, in alluding to import and export traffic, that most of the evidence given on this question "seemed to point to a desire on the traders' part, not so much for the waterways as for lower railway rates, in order to enable them to face foreign competition"; while Mr Davison, another of the Commissioners, who also dissents from the recommendations of the Majority Report, speaks of many of the canals as being "of little economic value to the trade of the country, apart from whatever influence they may have in keeping down railway rates," though he adds: "If this latter result were otherwise secured their continued existence could not be justified on economic grounds." Any effect which the carrying out of the Majority Report scheme of canal improvement _might_ have on railway rates would, all the same, be felt only in the towns or localities directly concerned. Benefit would result to (1) those traders who could use the canals, and (2) those who, though not using the canals, obtained the lower railway rates, if reductions really were secured through the canal competition; while traders at a distance from the waterways would not only have to help to pay the cost, though themselves deriving no benefit therefrom, but might even see two classes of their own competitors in the favoured districts gain an advantage over them--one set from State-owned and State-aided canals, and another from the local reductions in railway rates to which those canals might be expected to lead. The proposals of the Royal Commission may well be approved by certain localities or individual traders on the line {311}of route of the canals proposed to be taken in hand. They are hardly likely, however, to commend themselves to the traders and taxpayers of the country in general. My own view is that if the State is prepared to find money for the purpose of cheapening the cost of transport, it could do so to better advantage if, instead of spending millions on an impracticable and partial scheme of canal resuscitation, it lightened the burden of taxation now falling on the railway companies, and thus improved their position in regard, not merely to traders in particular districts, but to the trade and industries of the United Kingdom as a whole. {312}CHAPTER XXIII DECLINE OF TURNPIKES