miles, until the Mersey is reached. The distance by the first of these routes is 106½, and by the second only 89¼ miles, against 90 miles by railway. Hull is in water communication with Birmingham by way of the Birmingham, the Coventry, and the North Staffordshire Canals, and thence by the open navigation of the Trent and the Humber for a distance of 120½ miles. Finally, Birmingham has three separate water routes to the Severn ports, all of them terminating in the Gloucester and Berkeley section, after traversing the Severn for 30 to 44 miles—the entire distance being 86 miles in two cases, and 95 miles in another. The nearest means of getting at the sea available at present to the people of Birmingham is, therefore, 86 miles. But neither this nor any of the other routes indicated are of any real value to the Midlands, owing to the limited size of the canals, and the difficulty of working them as an unbroken chain of communication. Thus, taking the water route to London, the three first canals—the Birmingham, the Warwick and Birmingham, and the Warwick and Napton—have locks only 72 feet long by 7 feet broad and 4 feet draft. On the section of the Oxford Canal to be passed over, only 5 miles in length, there is no lock, but on the Grand Junction Canal, which has to be traversed for a distance of 101 miles, the locks are 14 feet by 6 feet by 4 feet 6 inches, and on the Regent’s Canal, where the transport terminates, the locks are 90 feet by 15 feet by 5 feet. The same condition of things applies to the physical characteristics of the waterways between Birmingham and Liverpool. Hull might be more readily reached if only the Trent were a little deeper, but as the average draft of the locks on that waterway does not exceed 3 feet 6 inches, it is clear that no vessel of large size could navigate it, and to dredge it to a reasonable depth for the whole distance of 102 miles would be a most serious undertaking. The most promising means of reaching the sea are therefore those provided by the Severn route. The river itself is available for the greater part of the distance on this route in one case, after traversing 26 miles of canal on the Birmingham, Stourbridge, and Staffordshire and Worcestershire systems. The average depths of the locks on the Severn over the 44 miles that it has to be navigated by this route is about 6 feet, while they are 99 feet long and 20 feet wide. These dimensions would allow of the passage of really good-sized boats, but as it is, with the broken gauge of the other canals, no boat can pass through to the Severn loaded beyond 33 tons. Another matter that seriously militates against the water facilities of Birmingham is that the different canals are, of course, under different administrations, and each authority levies tolls capriciously and disproportionately to the distance traversed and facilities afforded. Thus, it was given in evidence before the Canal Committee of 1883[59]