In 1883, a Committee was appointed by Parliament to enquire into the condition and the position of the canals and internal navigation of the country, to report thereupon, and to make such recommendations as might appear necessary. It sat during the greater part of the Session. Many charges were made against railway companies which owned canals. They could not be answered in that Session for want of time. So little importance seems to have been attached to them or indeed to the subject of canals, that the Committee was not re-appointed in the following Session. No report was therefore ever made. The subject affords a valuable illustration of the railway legislation in this country, and of the prejudice and misapprehension which exist in some quarters as to the conduct of railway companies. Far from there being an inordinate desire to absorb canals, it will appear that those which belong to railway companies have, as a rule, been forced upon them, either to remove the opposition of the canal companies, or as a condition of railway Bills being passed. [105] Mr. Mundella, Debate on Railway and Canal Traffic Bill, 6th May, 1886. Hansard, vol. cccv., page 461. [106] Sir B. Samuelson, Debate on Railway and Canal Traffic Bill, 1886. Hansard, vol. cccv., page 441. Let us give an instance of the treatment which the promoters of railways, when opposed by the representatives of waterways, have received at the hands of Parliament. In respect of the Severn navigation, the Great Western Company are at the present time under a heavy liability. This liability was forced upon their predecessors, the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway Company, when applying for powers to construct their railway, which did not really compete with the navigation to any serious extent, if at all. Clause 94 of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway Act of 1845 recites that the Severn Commissioners had raised the sum of £180,000 upon the security of the tolls on the Severn navigation, in the expectation that those tolls would reach the sum of £14,000 a year. It provides that the Great Western and the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway Companies should, from the opening of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway for traffic between Worcester and Wolverhampton, and so long as the principal moneys raised by the Severn Commissioners, or interest thereon, remained due, make up to the Severn Commissioners any deficiency between the actual amount of the tolls for any year, and the sum of £14,000. The Great Western Company do not possess or even control the navigation. Yet this liability was forced on the promoters as a condition of obtaining their Bill; and in respect of it the Great Western Company actually now pay between £6,000 and £7,000 per annum!