Undoubtedly the suggestion of Sir B. Samuelson that reductions should be made in the expenses of working railways, and that undue competition should be avoided by arrangements between the companies, is important and well worthy of consideration. To commerce generally, and to the traders using railways, it might clearly be advantageous. It may, however, be premature to expect that at present such agreements as he suggests would be sanctioned by Parliament, except upon onerous conditions. If such agreements were favourably regarded by the representatives of commerce and agriculture in Parliament, the companies would more willingly enter into them. In many cases greater economy and improved working would undoubtedly result, and there is no reason why such arrangements should not be made beneficial to the public as well as fair to the railway companies. SECTION XVI. RAILWAYS AND CANALS. Great stress is laid on the importance of canals. Railway companies have been accused of preventing them from competing with railways, of improperly getting possession of them, not maintaining them, and so acting as to force the traffic on to their lines. In Parliament and elsewhere they have been charged with purchasing canals and then deliberately killing them, either by ceasing to keep them in repair or by reducing rates upon their lines to a point which makes competition by the canals impossible. These assertions have been made before Royal Commissions and Select Committees. In no official report or other authoritative document, however, have they been declared proved; and it is submitted that facts do not warrant them. Not to the artifices of railway companies, but to altered conditions of trade is due, in the main, the inability of many canals to hold their own against railways. The necessity for rapid transit, the disinclination to keep large stocks, the growth of the practice of applying to the producer or manufacturer as orders come in, and as occasion requires, and the low rates by railway for articles which canals can convey, have all been unfavourable to the latter. It is not unimportant to note that no Commission or Committee has been able to point out any mode in which the decline of canal traffic--“the creeping paralysis of our inland waterways”--could be arrested. We may, too, incidentally note the considerable diversity of opinion as to the importance of canals generally. Some complain that great injury has been done to the trading community by the absorption of the canals by railway companies.[105] Others will have it that too much importance is attached to canals; they have been even described as “_those wretched little waterways which could never compete successfully with the great railway companies_.”[106]