For trades and businesses conducted on these lines, the railway--taking and delivering promptly consignments great or small, penetrating to every part of the country, and supplemented by its own commodious warehouses, in which goods can be stored as desired by the trader pending delivery or shipment--is a far more convenient mode of transport than the canal boat; and to the railway the perfect revolution that has been brought about in the general trade of this country is mainly due. Business has been simplified, subdivided, and brought within the reach of "small" men to an extent that, but for the railway, would have been impossible; and it is difficult to imagine that traders in general will forego all these advantages now, and revert once more to the canal boat, merely for the sake of a saving in freight which, in the long run, might be no saving at all. Here it may be replied by my critics that there is no idea of reviving canals in the interests of the general trader, and that all that is sought is to provide a cheaper form of transport for those heavier or bulkier minerals or commodities which, it is said, can be carried better and more economically by water than by rail. Now this argument implies the admission that canal resuscitation, on a national basis, or at the risk more or less of the community, is to be effected, not for the general trader, but for certain special classes of traders. As a matter of fact, however, such canal traffic as exists to-day is by no means limited to heavy or bulky articles. In their earlier days canal companies simply provided a water-road, as it were, along which goods could be taken by other persons on payment of certain tolls. To enable them to meet better the competition of the railways, Parliament granted to the canal companies, in 1846, the right to become common carriers as well, and, though only a very small proportion of them took advantage of this concession, those that did are indebted in part to the transport of general merchandise for such degree of prosperity as they have retained. The separate firms of canal carriers ("by-traders") have adopted a like policy, and, notwithstanding the changes in trade of which I have spoken, a good deal of general merchandise does go by canal to or from places that happen to be situated in the immediate vicinity of the waterways. It is extremely probable that if some of the canals which have survived had depended entirely on the transport of heavy or bulky commodities, their financial condition to-day would have been even worse than it really is.