The promoters of the Ship Canal secured an option over the Bridgewater Canal, and this was really the backbone of their scheme. At the close of the first parliamentary enquiry, when the Canal Bill was thrown out, Mr. Wakefield Cropper, the chairman of the Bridgewater Canal, came to me and said, "The option given to the Ship Canal people has expired; can you not persuade the Dock Board to buy up the Bridgewater Canal, and this will put an end to the Ship Canal project?" I walked across the Green Park with Mr. T. D. Hornby, the chairman of the Dock Board, and Mr. Squarey, the solicitor, and told them of this conversation, and they both agreed with me that the Dock Board ought to make the purchase, but, unfortunately, nothing was done. In the following year the Ship Canal Bill was again thrown out, and Mr. Cropper again urged that we should secure the Bridgewater Canal. I called at the Liverpool Dock office in London and saw Mr. Hornby and Mr. Squarey; they both agreed that the purchase of the Bridgewater Canal ought to be made, but again no step was taken, and the Ship Canal made their third application to Parliament, and succeeded. I have always felt that the Dock Board thus missed a great opportunity, which in years to come may prove to have been the golden chance of securing the prosperity of the port. CORPORATION LEASEHOLDS. One of the most important enquiries in which I engaged was into our system of fines on renewals of the leases of the property belonging to the Corporation. The Corporation owns a very large estate within the city. The first important purchase was made by the Corporation in 1674, when a lease for 1,000 years was obtained from Sir Caryl Molyneux, of the Liverpool Heath, which bounded the then town of Liverpool on its eastern side. This land had been sold on seventy-five years' leases, and as the leases ran out the lessees had the option of renewal on the payment of a fine; and in order to encourage the frequent renewal of these leases the fines during the first twenty years of a lease were made very light. It has been the practice of the Corporation to use the fines received as income in the year in which they are received. The fines received in the fifty years, 1835 to 1885, amounted to £1,762,000. This system of finance is radically wrong. The fines ought to be invested in annuities, and if this had been done these fines would now have returned an income of £66,000 per annum, and would have gone on increasing. The committee, of which I was the chairman, held a prolonged enquiry, and examined many experts and actuaries, and our report is to-day the standard authority on the leasehold question. Our conclusions and recommendations are as sound to-day as they were then, but unfortunately the Council declined to accept or adopt them, and we still pursue the economically bad system of spending in the first year the fine which should be spread over the term of the lease.