"The history of existing canals, waterways, etc., affords abundant evidence of the evils to which I have been averting. An original share in the Loughborough Canal, for example, which cost £142, 17s. is now selling at about £1,250, and yields a dividend of £90 or £100 a year. The fourth part of a Trent and Mersey Canal share, or £50 of the company's stock, is now fetching £600, and yields a dividend of about £30 a year. And there are various other canals in nearly the same situation." At the close of the debate which followed, Mr Morrison withdrew his resolution, owing to the announcement that the matter to which he had called attention would be dealt with in a Bill then being framed. It is none the less interesting thus to find that Parliamentary revisions of railway rates were, in the first instance, directly inspired by the extortions practised on the traders by canal companies in the interest of dividends far in excess of any that the railway companies have themselves attempted to pay. Reverting to the story of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway--the projection of which, as Mr Sandars' "Letter" shows, represented a revolt against "the exorbitant and unjust charges of the water-carriers"--the Bill promoted in its favour was opposed so vigorously by the canal and other interests that £70,000 was spent in the Parliamentary proceedings in getting it through. But it was carried in 1826, and the new line, opened in 1830, was so great a success that it soon began to inspire many similar projects in other directions, while with its opening the building of fresh canals for ordinary inland navigation (as distinct from ship canals) practically ceased.