a small office, leaving all the handling of the commodities in which they deal to be done by the railway companies. In fact, the situation might be summed up by saying that, under the trading conditions of to-day, railway companies are not only common carriers, but general warehousemen in addition. If inland canals are to take over any part of the transport at present conducted by the railways, they will have to provide the traders with like facilities. So, in addition to buying up and reconstructing the canals; in addition to widenings, and alterations of the gradients of roads and railways passed under; and in addition to the maintenance of towing paths, locks, bridges, tunnels, aqueducts, culverts, weirs, sluices, cranes, wharves, docks, and quay walls, reservoirs, pumping machinery, and so on, there would still be all the subsidiary considerations in regard to warehousing, etc., which would arise when it became a question with the trader whether or not he should avail himself of the improved water transport thus placed at his disposal. For the purposes of reasonable argument I will assume that no really sensible person, knowing anything at all of actual facts and conditions, would attempt to revive the entire canal system of the country.[13] I have shown on p. 19, that even in the year 1825 it was recognised that some of the canals had been built by speculators simply as a means of abstracting money from the pockets of foolish investors, victims of the "canal mania," and that no useful purpose could be served by them even at a time when there were no competing railways. Yet to-day sentimental individuals who, in wandering about the country, come across some of these absolutely useless, though still, perhaps, picturesque survivals, write off to the newspapers to lament over "our neglected waterways," to cast the customary reflections on the railway companies, and to join their voice to the demand for immediate nationalisation or municipalisation, according to their individual leanings, and regardless of all considerations of cost or practicability.