1882.] Sir F. Bramwell on the CJiannel Tunnel. 121 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, May 19, 1882. 



William Bowman, Esq. LL.D. F.E.S. Honorary Secretary and 



Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Sir Frederick Bramwell, F.E.S. M.B.I. 



The Making and Working of a Channel Tunnel. 



Such is the title of my lecture this evening, and you will gather 

 from it that I come before you with practically an abstract proposi- 

 tion ; thus I do not ask you to consider with me whether the tunnel 

 should be made at all, whether, if made, it would be a pecuniary 

 success in the way of earning a large revenue, or whether, if made, 

 it would detract in any aj^preciable degree from the safety of our 

 insular position. These are contentious matters, and these are 

 therefore purposely omitted from my lecture of to-night. 



We will leave for the Society of Arts the consideration of the 

 question, whether those men who are willing to embark their money 

 in such an undertaking, are wise or not, and to it, and to the Statistical 

 Society we will leave the question, whether jDcrsons who base their 

 estimates of revenue upon existing traffic, and do not allow for the 

 development arising from an improved mode of communication, are 

 as unwise as those who," in the early days of railways, opposed them 

 on the ground that they never could pay, because, as those persons 

 showed, the stage-coach and the canal-barge transported only so 

 many passengers and so many tons, supplemented by the tonnage of 

 the road waggons, and they argued that the fares and freights to be 

 earned for the transportation of the whole of these passengers and tons, 

 so far from yielding a dividend, must be utterly inadequate to cover 

 working expenses. 



We "s\dll leave these Societies jointly to consider whether, if it be 

 thought desirable to make a bridge with spans of nearly a third of a 

 mile in length, and of a height of 150 feet above the water, and 150 

 feet from the extreme top of the piers to the bottom of the foundations, 

 over the Firth of Forth, to connect up a jDopulation of only about a 

 million north of that Firth with the country south of it, and to 

 expend two millions sterling on such a bridge, it is desirable to 

 imjDrove the means of communication, and render them free from all 

 perils and questions of the sea, between the whole of Great Britain, 

 with its thirty millions of population and its wondrous manufactui'ing 

 and productive power, and the continent of Europe, and through that 

 continent with our possessions in India and Australia. Finally, we 

 will leave it to the United Service Institution, guided in their delibera- 



