But, independently of commercial, engineering, rating and other considerations, there are important matters of principle to be considered. Great Britain is almost the only country in the world where the railway system has been constructed without State or municipal aid--financial or material--of any kind whatever. The canals were built by "private enterprise," and the railways which followed were constructed on the same basis. This was recognised as the national policy, and private investors were allowed to put their money into British railways, throughout successive decades, in the belief and expectation that the same principle would be continued. In other countries the State has (1) provided the funds for constructing or buying up the general railway system; (2) guaranteed payment of interest; or (3) has granted land or made other concessions, as a means of assisting the enterprise. Not only has the State refrained from adopting any such course here, and allowed private investors to bear the full financial risk, but it has imposed on British railways requirements which may certainly have led to their being the best constructed and the most complete of any in the world, but which have, also, combined with the extortions of landowners in the first instance, heavy expenditure on Parliamentary proceedings, etc., to render their construction per mile more costly than those of any other system of railways in the world; while to-day local taxation is being levied upon them at the rate of £5,000,000 per annum, with an annual increment of £250,000. This heavy expenditure, and these increasingly heavy demands, can only be met out of the rates and charges imposed on those who use the railways; and one of the greatest grievances advanced against the railways, and leading to the agitation for canal revival, is that these rates and charges are higher in Great Britain than in various other countries, where the railways have cost less to build, where State funds have been freely drawn on, and where the State lines may be required to contribute nothing to local taxation. The remedy proposed, however, is not that anything should be done to reduce the burdens imposed on our own railways, so as to place them at least in the position of being able to make further concessions to traders, but that the State should now itself start in the business, in competition, more or less, with the railway companies, in order to provide the traders--if it can--with something _cheaper_ in the way of transport!