But let us look somewhat more closely into this theory that canals are better adapted than railways for the transport of minerals or heavy merchandise, calling for the payment of a low freight. At the first glance such a commodity as coal would claim special attention from this point of view; yet here one soon learns that not only have the railways secured the great bulk of this traffic in fair and open competition with the canals, but there is no probability of the latter taking it away from them again to any appreciable extent. Some interesting facts in this connection were mentioned by the late Sir James Allport in the evidence he gave before the Select Committee on Canals in 1883. Not a yard, he said, of the series of waterways between London and Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, part of Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire--counties which included some of the best coal districts in England for supplying the metropolis--was owned by railway companies, yet the amount of coal carried by canal to London had steadily declined, while that by rail had enormously increased. To prove this assertion, he took the year 1852 as one when there was practically no competition on the part of the railways with the canals for the transport of coal, and he compared therewith the year 1882, giving for each the total amount of coal received by canal and railway respectively, as follows:-- 1852 1882 Received by canal 33,000 tons 7,900 tons " " railway 317,000 " 6,546,000 " The figures quoted by Sir James Allport were taken from the official returns in respect to the dues formerly levied by the City of London and the late Metropolitan Board of Works on all coal coming within the Metropolitan Police Area, representing a total of 700 square miles; though at an earlier period the district in which the dues were enforced was that included in a 20-mile radius. The dues were abolished in 1889, and since then the statistics in question have no longer been compiled. But the returns for 1889 show that the imports of coal, by railway and by canal respectively, into the Metropolitan Police Area for that year were as follows:-- BY RAILWAY Tons. Cwts. Midland 2,647,554 0 London and North-Western 1,735,067 13 Great Northern 1,360,205 0 Great Eastern 1,077,504 13 Great Western 940,829 0 London and South-Western 81,311 2 South-Eastern 27,776 18 ------------------ Total by Railway 7,870,248 6 ------------------ BY CANAL